Page:Sir Thomas Munro and the British Settlement of the Madras Presidency.djvu/196

188 of the town, but to no purpose. He issued a proclamation, stationed the police in the streets to prevent riot, reinforced them with the revenue peons, and desired the officer commanding the troops to keep them in readiness within their lines. But in spite of all these precautions a serious affray, as might have been expected, occurs, in which property is plundered and lives are lost; and all this array of civil and military power, and all this tumult, arises solely from its being thought necessary that a writer of the court should have a palankeen at the celebration of a marriage. Had the writer not looked for the support of the magistrate, he would undoubtedly not have ventured to go in procession, and no disturbance would have happened.

'The magistrate states that this very writer had gone about for many years in a palankeen without hindrance. But this is not the point in dispute: it is not his using a palankeen on his ordinary business, but his going in procession. It is this which constitutes the triumph of one party and the defeat of the other, and which, whilst such opinions are entertained by the natives, will always produce affrays. The magistrate supposes that the opposition was not justified by the custom of the country, because it was notorious that in many places of the same district the goldsmith caste went in procession in palankeens. This is very likely; but it does not affect the question, which relates solely to what is the custom of the town of Masulipatam, not to what that of other places is. …