Memoirs of a Bengal Civilian

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This new edition carries a very useful 21-page introduction by Peter Penner (in addition to the original introduction) by Philip Mason, author of The Men Who Ruled India and an epilogue by Beames's grandson, Christopher Cooke, that assesses Beames as an administrator and a scholar. Eminently readable, the edition is particularly welcome at a time when memoirs like this are increasingly being viewed as valuable sources for an interpretation of the British Raj.

John Beames (1837-1902) spent most of his working life in Bihar, Orissa and Bengal. He came to India in August 1858: the mutiny had not yet been fully quelled. Before he retired in 1893, he had risen to be a Commissioner administering a few districts and for a short time held a seat on the Bengal Board of Revenue.

Beames was a man of strong opinions and was often in trouble with the authorities because of his outspokenness. He thought little of Lieutenant-Governors as a class. But his special dislike was reserved for Sir Richard Temple, Lt. Governor of Bengal, whose vanity and self-glorification he couldn't stand.

There were instances when Beames stood by the people against tyranny. But, ironically enough, he also shared the casual racism of his peers and did not recognise Indian ICS officers as his academic and cultural equals: he strongly distrusted the Bengali intelligentsia.

Beames was a pioneer philologist. A magnum opus of his is the three volume Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India (1872-79). Other works of his include Outline of Indian Philology (1867) and Grammar for the Bengali Language (1891). He knew a number of languages including Persian, Sanskrit, Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, and Hindi and had a working knowledge of German, French and Italian. Beames started writing his Memoirs in 1875 but completed the task only after retirement, in England. His outspokenness which held him down in his career is his chief strength as a writer and tremendously enhances the value of his estimates of men and affairs of his time. Beames writes without being either pompous or timid.

THIS narrative was begun at Cuttack, where I was Magistrate and Collector, in 1875, and was continued at intervals till 1878 when, owing to my being transferred to Chittagong, and to other causes, it was discontinued. I tried to go on with it in 188o at Chinsurah but I then found a curious thing. I could not remember recent events so clearly as I did those which had occurred long ago. As I had brought down my narrative to the year 1870 it was necessary to wait till the subsequent events had receded further into the past so that I might recollect them better. The manuscript was therefore laid aside, and by degrees forgotten. Now in the year 1896, having retired from the Civil Service, and returned to England, I take it up again, and as on reading it over I see many things which I should now prefer to describe differently, as well as some which are incorrect, it seems better to write it from the beginning.

If it should be asked why so obscure a person should think it worth his while to write the story of his life at all I reply that it is precisely because I am an obscure person- an average, ordinary, middle-class Englishman- that I write it. There is an abundance of biographies of eminent and illustrious men, but the very fact that they were eminent takes them out of the category of ordinary mortals. Their lives, therefore, though deeply interesting on account of their great deeds, are different from the general run of men who were their contemporaries. It will I think be interesting to posterity- or at any rate to my descendants- to read the account of how an ordinary, average Englishman lived in the reign of Queen Victoria. Such as my life has been, such has been that of thousands of other men in this period of time. And as India, where I spent so large a portion of my life, is already changing and many institutions and conditions of existence which were in my day, are passing away, the Indian part of my life may be perhaps useful as a record of a state of things which has ceased to be. Finally my descendants if they ever read these pages may be interested in learning what manner of men their forefathers were. And even if no one should care to read these pages, it amuses me to write them, which is perhaps as good a reason for writing them as any other.