From courtroom to countryside: A British judge's love affair with India

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3 days ago

Thomas Erskine Perry had a serious case of wanderlust. During his time in 19th-century India, the British politician and judge made full use of his privilege as a high-ranking member of the colonial bureaucracy to travel widely across the subcontinent – even though, in the pre-railway era, travel was often slow and difficult.
Perry, who served as Chief Justice of the Bombay Supreme Court, documented his experiences in his 1855 book Bird's-Eye View of India: Extracts from a Journal Kept in the Provinces, Nepal, etc.
The book is filled with vivid and sometimes unexpected observations, including this fantastical-sounding glimpse of 19th-century Bombay: 'A tiger was killed in Bombay shortly before I arrived there in 1841, having swam across an arm of the sea, and they are numerous in the adjoining island of Salsette.'
But what stands out most in the book is his account of a planned 2,000-kilometre journey from Bombay to Lahore in November 1850 – a trip a friend described as 'a thousand miles of jungle, where I should not meet one civilised being or gain one new idea'.
Despite his friend's warnings, Perry went ahead with the journey, remarking that he far preferred 'the excitement of a journey through a new and romantic country, where every nook has its tale and every peak has its legend, to the dull monotony of an Indian hill station'.
The judge described two main ways in which the ruling elite travelled across India at the time. 'One, and the most agreeable,' Perry wrote, 'is to travel with a large retinue of servants – (I heard the other day that Lord Dalhousie, on coming down the mountains from Simla on his march to Sind, had no fewer than eleven thousand porters to carry his baggage) – and by this means you pass from one station to another by an easy morning ride, and pursue all your usual avocations as if you were home, with little other change that a fresh view every day from the door of your tent.'
The alternative, and the option Perry chose, was to travel light – with little baggage, with no servant or at the most one servant, and using a mix of transport, including horse, camel, elephant and palanquin.
'Travelling from Bombay northward or southward has been much ameliorated since I arrived in India in 1841 by the introduction of packet-steamers,' he noted. 'To Surat, which is 190 miles north of Bombay, various boats ply two or three times a week.'
Baroda palace
From Surat, Perry continued north via the Gulf of Cambay, landing at an unnamed village. From there, the Maharaja of Baroda arranged for his transport to the city by camel and palanquin. On the way, Perry encountered a European conducting a survey for a potential railway line connecting Baroda to the coast.
Upon arriving at the Baroda palace with three other Englishmen, Perry received a ceremonial welcome, witnessed by what he estimated to be 20,000 spectators. While he appeared to respect the Maharaja, he was openly critical of the Marathas.
'On seeing the whole court assemble, as I did on this occasion, I was much struck at the absence of anything like a Gujarati gentlemen,' he wrote. 'All the public employments are filled by Marathas, and, I must say, I never saw so so ill-favoured a nobility or bureaucracy in my life. But the Marathas everywhere are an ugly, uncultivated race, and it is only by the aid of the numerous brahmans who are settled among them, and who form a very large portion of the population in Maharashtra, that they have been able to conduct civil government at all.'
Perry also expressed disappointment with the entertainment at the palace. He found the 'nach' by professional dance girls dull and left with a sour impression. 'The prince and his family were covered with jewels, but, being ill-set and uncut, they made the impression only of 'barbaric pearl and gold,' not of magnificence; and his principal chiefs had such a besotted, stupified look, without either the vigour of soldiers or the refinement of courtiers, that I could not help feeling contempt for the whole show.'
Rajasthani villages
As a representative of the colonial power, Perry was shown deference wherever he went. Local rulers would provide him with resources and privileges. On his journey from modern-day Gujarat to Rajasthan, the Gaekwads of Baroda arranged for him to be accompanied by 36 bearers and a camel.
In most villages, the local headman or thakur would greet him and extend generous hospitality. In one town in what is Rajasthan today, Perry noted that a crowd of two to three hundred gathered just to catch a glimpse of him.
The judge was impressed with the traditional stepwell in the Rajasthani town. 'This one was about sixty feet deep, and approachable to its level by steps; and round and about it our whole party speedily made themselves comfortable,' Perry wrote. 'On inquiry, I ascertained that it was a Brahman of Udaipur who had built this well about a hundred years ago at the expense of 2000 L [it's unclear what he meant by the letter]. Its good state of repair, however, makes me doubt whether its age is so great as this, for Hindus rarely seem to touch the works left them by another.'
In many places, Perry stayed in dharamshalas or rest houses built for Hindu pilgrims. 'In most Hindu villages, there is a public building entirely for travellers, maintained, not by Government, but by the community; and an immense convenience to wayfarers it is,' he wrote. 'In Europe we have no institution at all of a similar character (possibly it is the climate which does not allow it) which does so much good at such little expense.'
Perry described Hinduism as a 'beneficent' religion for its followers and remarked that even sceptics benefited from its customs. 'To the poorest Hindu in every village there is a hotel, in the shape of a temple, where he will find lodgings, good company, water, and, no doubt, if he is in actual want, food,' he wrote. 'The religion, entering as it does into every institution of life, is a perpetual source of amusement to the votaries in their different festivals and processions; (and where happiness can be produced on easy and innocent terms, it is difficult to witness with regret!) and the morality it inculcates covers the country with wells and tanks.'
One of the places Perry admired most was Udaipur. 'On going and returning, I perambulated nearly the whole city, which is full of interesting bits, as the artists call it, and of better architecture, with greater breadth of street, than any town I have seen in India.' He also visited Chittor after being told about the 14th-century mass immolation of women from its fort.
His admiration for the Rajputs was clear – he praised their 'good looks, good manners, and gentility,' which, he wrote, fascinated passersby. However, he argued that the British had to prioritise relationships with the 'Bunnea' (merchant) class and cultivators in order to help India progress.
Delhi's monuments
Perry's journey then took him through Jaipur and to Agra, where he, like so many others, was awestruck by the Taj Mahal. 'I have seen no view that does anything like justice to it, especially to the garden front, where the blending of the avenue of dark cypresses with the white marble of the edifice has something indescribably beautiful,' he wrote. 'Akbar's tomb is not so nearly happily imagined, and is much inferior in architectural pretension to the tomb at Futtehpur, but it is imposing from its size, and from the large architectural garden about it, and it likewise impresses one with an interest from continuing the ashes of so great, wise, and good a sovereign as Akbar, having, so far as my historical knowledge extends, no superior, and I think no equal.'
He was also struck by how well the city's monuments were maintained. 'There is something about the monuments at Agra which is very gratifying – I mean the decorous manner in which they are kept. They are as clean and neat as St. Peter's, at Rome, and cleaner-looking than St. Paul's; and the gardens about them are in full bearing with oranges and roses, which quite cover the expense of keeping the premises in repair and good order.'
From Agra, Perry continued to Mathura and then Delhi, which also left a strong impression on him. 'Delhi is very remarkable as an Indian city from its abundance of Mahomedans, the proportion to the Hindus, being one to two; in no other place that I have been in is it more than one to ten,' he wrote. 'The principal mosque, the Jama Masjid, has its steps covered with idlers, with traffickers, and vendors of doves, just as one might suppose was the case with the Temple at Jerusalem; and the masjid, from its large proportions, is very imposing.'
At the Qutub Minar, Perry encountered debates about its origins. 'There is a controversy whether it is of Hindu or Mahomedan architecture,' he wrote. 'But the mode in which the Arabic inscriptions blend with the style of building, and its general imposing character (so unlike the scrimped over-elaborated work of the Hindus) does not leave a doubt on my mind that the Mussulmans were its erectors; and I see no reason to doubt the account given by Mr. [Mountstuart] Elphinstone is the correct one.'
However, he noted that Thomas Theophilus Metcalfe, a senior East India Company official who had lived near the Qutub for over 30 years and took him around the monument, believed it was originally a Hindu structure.
Love for India
Perry eventually reached Ambala, where he accepted an invitation from a relative – then posted as the British Resident in Nepal – to visit the largely closed Hindu kingdom. This meant abandoning his plans to visit the 'Sikh cities' of Amritsar and Lahore.
Before leaving Punjab, he had a brief but memorable encounter with Duleep Singh, the last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire. 'He is a fine boy of eleven years old, and is accompanied by his relative, a younger boy, the son of Shere Singh,' Perry wrote. 'They were calling on the general here, Sir Dudley Hill, and the boys seemed amused by being led through, and introduced to, all the intricacies of a well-mounted English establishment.'
His book also offers a rare 19th-century European perspective on Nepal, a kingdom that, at the time, remained mostly closed to foreigners.
Thomas Erskine Perry returned to Britain in 1853 and was elected to the House of Commons the following year. He spent six more years there, delivering lectures about India, a country he truly loved. In 1859, he moved back to India and served for over two decades on the Council of India, an advisory body to the Secretary of State for India.