Introduction
On 28 August 1857, the Governor of the Straits Settlements, Edmund Augustus Blundell, wrote urgently to the Governor General of India:
Sir,. . .a very unseemly and unreasoning panic has prevailed in this Settlement during the present month. . .I have endeavoured to give assurances of the entire absence of danger but it seemed to me that the more earnest might be my assurances and those of my subordinates, the more they were distrusted. . .Footnote 2
At the time, the European community had come to be deluged by an imagined threat posed by Indian inhabitants in Singapore. While transported convicts from the subcontinent were viewed as an ominous danger, aspersions had been cast on the fidelity of the Madras troops who comprised the mainstay of the military garrison guarding the settlement, and European residents had grown wary of the wider body of the Indian populace in Singapore.
The European disposition towards Singapore's Indians in 1857 reflected a marked change when compared with preceding years. Colonial officials in Singapore had hitherto viewed Indians to be largely compliant, and depended heavily on them for public works and security in the settlement. Just one year before, Governor Blundell, in his Report on the Administration of the Straits Settlements, had commended transported convicts from India as ‘steady, well-behaved men, doing no harm in the Settlement, and found useful and industrious in many respects’.Footnote 3 Why then had the Indian inhabitants of Singapore come to be so feared by Europeans in late 1857?
This transformation is better understood in a broader context. Some 2000 miles from Singapore, a major conflict had broken out in colonial north India. The Great Indian RebellionFootnote 4—recognized by scholars as the most significant military challenge to the British Empire in India in the nineteenth centuryFootnote 5—witnessed the mutiny of over 100,000 Indian troops and widespread civil strife.Footnote 6 Long after the conflict had been extinguished, the rebellion continued to leave a deep imprint ‘on the fabric of Indian society and on the nature of British rule’Footnote 7 in India. Indeed Thomas Metcalf suggested that:
The most pervasive legacy of the Mutiny can be found. . .in the intangible sphere of human relations, in the attitude of the British and Indian peoples toward each other. . .a year of bitter racial warfare left an abiding mark. The British suspicious and alert, were now far more clearly an occupying power.Footnote 8
Recent studies which have focused on the local manifestations of the revolt, show that its reverberations extended deep into Southern and Eastern India.Footnote 9 A nascent literature has also emerged that is attentive to the ‘global dimensions’ of the uprising.Footnote 10 Peter Putnis explained how developments in communications in the mid nineteenth century resulted in ‘news of the events of 1857 in India [travelling] around the world. . .making it one of the first “global media events”’.Footnote 11 Clare Andersen's work, The Indian Uprising of 1857–8: prisons, prisoners and rebellion, while concerned primarily with the impact of the revolt on colonial prisons in India, revealed the opposition to the transportation of convict-rebels from Europeans residing in colonies beyond the subcontinent. She posited that their hostility was influential in the British Indian Government's decision to setup a penal settlement for Indian convicts in the Andamans.Footnote 12 An article by Marina Carter and Crispin Bates entitled ‘Empire and locality: a global dimension to the 1857 Indian Uprising’, underscored the differentiated reactions to the transportation of convict-rebels, as British officials sought ‘to exploit the outcome of the revolt and to manipulate the labour market to the advantage of their respective colonies’.Footnote 13 Carter and Bates went on to show that in the aftermath of the revolt, a sharp increase in emigration to the sugar colonies was recorded from parts of northern India that were most adversely affected by the conflict. Notwithstanding the diversity of responses and repercussions in distant colonies of the Empire, Andersen, Carter and Bates acknowledged that during the rebellion, panic-stricken Europeans in the Straits Settlements (specifically Singapore), who had grown suspicious of Indian inhabitants settled there, were the most vehement opponents to the transportation of convict-rebels.Footnote 14
The advent of the Indian Rebellion, however, provides only a partial explanation of why Indian inhabitants in Singapore had come to be so vilified by Europeans in the settlement at the time. This paper posits that an understanding of the change in the European disposition towards Indians in Singapore also requires an appreciation of the myriad local and transnational developments that worried the European community in Singapore in 1857. Located at the periphery of the British Empire, the European community in Singapore was miniscule. While they comprised the upper-crust of colonial society, their isolation and small number, in contrast to the large body of Asian inhabitants, was a source of anxiety. Advances in communications that expedited the flow of information in the mid nineteenth century reduced their sense of isolation, but also made them more sensitive to adverse developments beyond the Straits. In 1857, European vulnerabilities were put to the test as Singapore came to be inundated by reports of challenges to the Empire. In parallel, local disputes emerged between Europeans and sections of the Asian populace. A crucial episode which the Europeans saw as a ‘riot’ by Tamil-Muslims raised the spectre of an Indian menace in European eyes. That episode did not in itself lead to a panic, but brought to the fore European racial prejudices. It also threatened to rupture the relations between the European community and colonial officials. In an atmosphere of mounting local tensions, news of the mutiny of the Indian rebellion followed. Editorials and reports in the local English press added to the growing European distrust for Singapore's Indian inhabitants. A panic ensued when rumours spread of a conspiracy between the Indian militia and the transported convicts, planned for the period of Muharram. This panic would have important implications on the position of Indians in Singapore. It would leave an imprint on the future political development of the Straits Settlements.
To better comprehend the sense of panic that prevailed amongst European inhabitants in Singapore in 1857, this paper deciphers some transient elements and emotions—rumours, anxieties and prejudices—that tend to ‘[flourish] in times of social unrest and tension’.Footnote 15 In The Great Fear of 1789: Rural panic in revolutionary France—the landmark historical account of social panic—Georges Lefebvre underscored how, during the French Revolution, public rumours of an aristocratic plot were crucial in explaining the behaviour of peasants, which in turn proved instrumental in destroying the Ancien Regime.Footnote 16 Inspired by Lefebvre's classic, Indivar Kamtekar, in ‘The Shiver of 1942’, challenged conventional imperialist and nationalist historiography that privileged the ‘deliberate policies’ of the British Government and the Indian Congress in accounting for political developments during the ‘Quit India’ movement, by closely examining the role of public rumours of a Japanese invasion that led to the spread of panic in India during the Second World War.Footnote 17 Going beyond situations of dramatic crisis, Anand Yang underscored the usefulness of rumours to the historical study of popular ‘mentalités’ in colonial India. He argued that amongst the illiterate masses ‘rumors [sic] formed a fundamental mechanism for speaking out on issues’ because ‘the regular channels of communication [were] closed to them’.Footnote 18 By examining the rumours of late nineteenth century Bihar, Yang went on to show how they were used by peasants ‘to express their collective concerns in “ambiguous” situations’ such as census operations, troop movements and famine relief measures.Footnote 19 While these works posit that rumours are particularly useful in understanding popular ‘mentalités’, they also can be used to study other groups—in this instance to make sense of the behaviour, anxieties and prejudices of the European elite in mid nineteenth century colonial Singapore.
This paper forms part of a wider study of the history of South Asians in Singapore which is now in progress. During research, whilst working through official and non-official records in archives in Singapore, India and Britain, observer accounts and newspaper reports, the author's attention was drawn to myriad developments concerning the Indian inhabitants of Singapore in 1857. Notwithstanding fragmentary information in published works on colonial Singapore, Constance Turnbull is possibly the only other scholar who has recognized the significance of 1857 in the history of the Straits Settlements. Her 1958 article entitled ‘Communal Disturbances in the Straits Settlements in 1857’ is particularly instructive. That essay, however, concentrated on Penang—which witnessed an episode labelled by colonial officials as a Chinese ‘riot’—and is less concerned with Indian inhabitants in the Straits, significantly glossing over the fear that percolated in the eastern colonies following the advent of the Indian rebellion. In her 1972 work, The Straits Settlements, 1826–67: Indian Presidency to Crown Colony, Turnbull acknowledged that the Indian rebellion played an important role in informing the transfer of the Straits Settlements from the Government of India to the Crown—but 1857 comprised only a small component of a more wide-ranging book. Nonetheless both these works have been useful for this study.Footnote 20 Also influential are two recently published studies on Indian convicts: Clare Andersen's work mentioned above; and Anoma Pieris’ Hidden hands and divided landscapes: a penal history of Singapore's plural society.Footnote 21 In addition, local newspapersFootnote 22—particularly The Straits Times—proved to be invaluable sources of information because at that time, in addition to publishing reports and government notices, they often reproduced official correspondences and selected official documents that newspaper editors could access.Footnote 23 In the mid nineteenth century, The Straits Times functioned as the ‘voice’ of the sentiments of the elite, non-official European inhabitants in Singapore, who comprised nearly all the approximately 200 subscribers of the newspaper.Footnote 24 From its founding in 1845 to 1861, the newspaper was edited by Robert Carr Woods—an English journalist who had spent five years in Bombay.Footnote 25 While initially intended to ‘provide some lighter reading’,Footnote 26 by the mid-1850s The Straits Times increasingly articulated views which dissented from those of the Government. In January 1857, Woods expressed the newspaper's commitment to serve as ‘the undoubted, unflinching, and unvarying exponent of public opinion’,Footnote 27 by which he meant the views of the European public. The paper firmly backed the public meetings of European inhabitants (occasionally joined by a handful of the most distinguished Asian merchants) and published their resolutions alongside summaries of their discussions that also included rumours circulating within the community. It is precisely this partisan outlook that makes the editorial comments and reports in the paper especially useful as a primary source of the views of the European inhabitants in Singapore. Where possible, information gathered from local newspapers has been further corroborated by turning to official sources and observer accounts of that period.
European perceptions of the Asian inhabitants of Singapore in the mid nineteenth century
Soon after its founding in 1819, Singapore's rapid commercial success drew large numbers of emigrants from China, India, the Malay states and the Indonesian archipelago, alongside smaller numbers from Europe and the Middle East. From a settlement of less than 5,000 inhabitants in 1821, the total population of Singapore had grown to approximately 60,000 by the mid nineteenth century.Footnote 28 Europeans constituted a miniscule component of Singapore's inhabitants—360 in 1849, excluding those who were part of the militia.Footnote 29 Alongside colonial officials, the European community was overwhelmingly made up of merchants and lawyers who ‘possessed wealth and influence quite out of proportion. . .[with their] numbers’.Footnote 30 Like other ‘tropical dependencies’,Footnote 31 the European position at the apex of the socio-political hierarchy in the settlement was protected by the colonial administration who, in addition to having a hold over coercive power, implemented policies that facilitated the practice of ‘divide and rule’. For example, the boundaries of heterogeneous Asian cultural groupings were reinforced by the demarcation of separate settlements along supposed ‘racial’ lines. The sustenance of divisions between groups was seen as useful to limit the potential for collective challenges to political control, and in the economic arena, resistance by labour could possibly be met by playing off one ‘race’ against another.
In spite of these measures, the woefully inadequate security forces guarding the settlementFootnote 32 and the minute size of the community compared with the large number of Asian inhabitants, was a source of anxiety for Europeans. Turnbull notes that:
The European population experienced. . .unease at being a small, almost defenceless, minority among thousands of Asians, and well-to-do merchants of all races looked with misgiving at the mass of poor, illiterate, half-starving, rootless youths who came to seek their fortune in the Straits.Footnote 33
The ‘[superficial] social contact’Footnote 34 that Europeans maintained with wealthy Armenian, Jewish, Parsi, and Chinese merchants, did little to alleviate their insecurity. The non-European elite were also numerically small, and with the exception of some Chinese merchants, whom Europeans perceived as useful as intermediaries with Chinese labourers, most had limited influence on the wider Asian populace.
In the mid nineteenth century, Europeans did not view all Asian inhabitants in the colony as a threat. European perceptions of danger were framed by racial ‘images’ of the local Asian populace. These stereotypes, which preceded the heyday of ‘biologically defined. . .racial theories of innate differences’ in the late nineteenth century,Footnote 35 tended to be inscribed on the basis of situational factors. Hirschman posits that the ‘the relative degree of power was the key determinant of inter-group relations, and race was a frequent correlate in the equation’.Footnote 36 These images were also influenced by the extent to which a ‘race’ was deemed as valuable to the colonial political-economy.
Over three decades of colonial control, there were changes in European racial thinking towards the Asian inhabitants of Singapore. In the earliest years of the settlement when Malays comprised the majority, European accounts of Singapore scarcely spoke of Malay ‘docility’—a stereotype which became more evident from the mid nineteenth century.Footnote 37 In 1823, the Dutch official, Nahuijs van Burgst, reflected that ‘the British Resident has not the least authority [over the Malays], even when they attack the Europeans’.Footnote 38 He suggested at the time that, ‘many of the residents are not without anxiety’ of the Malay Temenggong, who ‘could easily be induced with the underlings and a great many of his friends the pirates, to attack the weak garrison and citizens’.Footnote 39 By the mid nineteenth century—although the number of Malay inhabitants had grown to over 12,000Footnote 40—they still constituted a minority in Singapore. With their headmen no longer perceived as a threat, Europeans had begun to adopt a ‘paternalistic’ outlook towards them.Footnote 41 In a letter to the Editor of The Singapore Free Press in 1849, ‘Semper Vigilans’ suggested that the Malays were ‘docile and improve by good treatment, and. . .[are] readily amenable to the light of real civilization, if properly managed’.Footnote 42 This paternalistic disposition was also evident in Governor Blundell's 1856 report, in which he described the Malays as ‘simple’ people who were ‘no match for scribes and accountants, and therefore. . .in need of the protection of the law against their acts’.Footnote 43
The European view of the ‘natives’ of China was more ambivalent. Records show that from the earliest period, the Chinese inhabitants of Singapore were recognized by Europeans as an ‘industrious race’.Footnote 44 The law agent George Windsor Earl averred that ‘[the Chinese] are the most numerous and the most important. . .their industry and perseverance have mainly contributed to the present flourishing state of the economy’.Footnote 45 Indeed by the 1850s, the tax revenues derived from Chinese emigrants exceeded ‘all the other classes put together’.Footnote 46 Yet, in the wake of their dramatic rise in number, Europeans had grown increasingly concerned of a potential threat from the Chinese inhabitants of Singapore. By 1827, the Chinese constituted the largest segment of the population, and from the 1840s made up approximately half of Singapore's inhabitants.Footnote 47 Correspondingly colonial officials had come to express concerns over the power wielded by Chinese ‘secret societies’.Footnote 48 In 1830, George Bonham cautioned, ‘the real object of the hoeys. . .as far as Singapore is concerned is in general rapine and robbery among the lower classes and the assumption of an improper degree of power and importance among the higher’.Footnote 49 In the mid nineteenth century, colonial authorities held these societies responsible for numerous outbreaks of violence. In 1851, an episode, which Europeans saw as secret society attacks on Chinese converts to Catholicism, was rumoured to have left about 500 people dead.Footnote 50 In 1854, major disturbances, that were perceived by colonial authorities as clashes between rival Chinese secret society groups, were reported to have seen ‘2000 to 3000 Chinese engaged in conflict. . .and whole villages [in the country] destroyed by fire and sword’.Footnote 51 That perception of threat led to Governor Blundell in 1856 labelling the Chinese inhabitants of Singapore as:
Turbulent and self-willed, their clannish feuds are sources of great annoyance, inasmuch as there is no knowing when and where they may break out in open violence, which, though confined to aggressions on each other, is alike dangerous to the lives and property of all persons within the immediate vicinity of the uproar. . .Footnote 52
In the mid nineteenth century, the ‘natives’ of India accounted for the third largest component of Singapore's population. Numbering 6,261 inhabitants in 1849—excluding transported convicts and those who were part of the military garrisonFootnote 53—the Indian population displayed considerable diversity in terms of religion, language, regional origin and occupation. The most distinctive sections of the Indian populace in Singapore comprised the so-called ‘Klings’Footnote 54—a term when used specifically referred to Tamil-speaking Muslims, although sometimes also employed more generally as a label for all Southern Indians—who constituted the largest component of the Indian populace,Footnote 55 followed by the heterogeneous body of transported convicts from India.
Prior to 1857, Europeans generally viewed the Indian inhabitants of Singapore as ‘peaceable’.Footnote 56 That disposition was partly informed by the fact that large sections of the Indian population in Singapore came under the direct control of the colonial authorities, and were relied upon for the security and development of public works at the settlement. As far as security was concerned, the Indian militia—initially the Bengal troops and from 1827, the Madras Native Infantry—constituted the mainstay of the military garrison in Singapore.Footnote 57 Europeans saw these troops as crucial not only for external defence, but also to protect their position from internal threats. This was evident in 1848, when the editor of The Singapore Free Press criticized the Governor of the Straits Settlements for transferring half a Company of troops to Hong Kong:
It would. . .have been imprudent, to have diminished the troops at Singapore by a single man, both on account of the smallness of their number. . .and the turbulent Chinese population whom they are required to overawe. Many of the Chinese are ready and prone to outrage, and they might have considered the small force left. . .as affording a favorable [sic] opportunity for plunder.Footnote 58
Indians were also heavily represented in the local police force, and in the mid nineteenth century, Bengalees Footnote 59 and Klings comprised most of the subaltern ranks.Footnote 60 Although Europeans deemed the subaltern ranks to be prone to corruption,Footnote 61 Indians continued to be recruited, in part due to limited choice—the Chinese were not recruited because colonial authorities were suspicious that as ‘members of secret societies. . .[they] would not divulge anything against a fellow member’.Footnote 62
Transported convicts comprised the largest section of the Indian population under the direct control of the colonial authorities. Established in 1825,Footnote 63 the penal settlement in Singapore housed approximately 1,500 Indian convicts by the mid nineteenth century.Footnote 64 Although many of these prisoners had been incarcerated for heinous offences, Turnbull suggests that there was no ‘comparable fear of Indian convicts’Footnote 65 amongst Europeans in the settlement. This was possibly due to the ‘comparatively few’ jailbreaks and infrequent records of serious crimes committed by them.Footnote 66 On the contrary, amongst the Asian inhabitants of Singapore, Indian transported convicts received some of the most favourable accolades from colonial officials in the mid nineteenth century. In 1850, T. Church, Resident Councillor of Singapore, recorded that
the community are indebted to the convict body for the cleanliness of the streets in town, and the extensive and admirable roads in the country, which elicit the praise and even astonishment of sojourners from the continent of India, and the colonies.
From the establishment of the penal colony, colonial authorities had depended heavily on the labour of transported convicts for public works. Over time, a system was put in place whereby convicts who advanced to a position of trust were allowed considerable freedom and were employed as servants by European officers, and as hospital attendants and shikkaries (hunters).Footnote 67 Ironically, during the violent outbreaks in 1851 and 1854, these convicts were ‘sent out in gangs to follow the rioters into the jungles and disperse them’.Footnote 68 The authorities displayed their measure of trust for the transported convicts, by recruiting many of them into the police force or as orderlies in public departments, once they had obtained their ‘ticket of leave’.Footnote 69 Referring to these ‘ticket-of-leave’ Indian convicts, Blundell observed that their conduct ‘has been altogether good, and affording convincing proof that these men are endeavouring to earn honest livelihoods’.Footnote 70
In the mid nineteenth century, connections between Europeans and Indians in the settlement also extended to the private sector. Although the number of Chinese labourers in Singapore was considerable, European plantation owners tended to employ Indian labour because of their perception that:
The European. . .[was] very much handicapped when working with Chinese coolies, as their own countrymen get more out of them and at a cheaper rate. The Chinese also manage so that most of the wages which the coolies are paid come back through their hands as payment for opium, food and clothes.Footnote 71
Thus in the Kallangdale estate—established by William Montgomerie—and the Balestier estate—run by the American Consul in Singapore, Joseph Balestier—Indians were employed in the cultivation of sugar and other crops such as cotton and nutmeg.Footnote 72 Europeans also turned to Indians for a variety of services—for example, as laundrymen, bullock-cart drivers and syces.Footnote 73 European merchants depended heavily on Kling boatmen to ferry their merchandise because they had a virtual monopoly over lighterage services in the Singapore river in the mid nineteenth century.Footnote 74 Although recognized for their ‘industriousness and perseverance’,Footnote 75 European depictions of Klings were not always favourable. In 1856, Blundell described them as ‘vociferous and servile. . .the dregs apparently of their respective communities. . .from the Madras side of India’.Footnote 76 This portrayal was not based on a notion of danger from the Klings, but rather on an assumption of their pecuniary behaviour. He suggested that ‘the blow. . .would rejoice the heart of a Kling with a hope that pecuniary compensation, however small, would follow the injury, however great’.Footnote 77
Notwithstanding the many inter-linkages between Europeans and the ‘natives’ of India, it would be an exaggeration to suggest that there were no contentious issues. Prior to 1857, two matters stood out as sources of irritation to segments of the European populace. From the early 1850s, some Europeans were known to evince their qualms about the transportation of convicts. In 1855, the merchant Jose d’ Almeida, complained directly to Bengal that the penal settlement was a drain on Singapore's financial resources.Footnote 78 Yet prior to 1857, these criticisms were not representative of the sentiments of the general body of Europeans—official or non-official. Governor Blundell, responding to d'Almeida's critique, staunchly defended the contributions of the transported convicts:
. . .the whole of the existing Roads throughout the Island, more than 150 miles in extent, every Bridge in both Town and Country, Jetties, Piers, etc. have been constructed by Convict Labour. . .A Church has been erected every brick and every measure of lime in which has been made and laid by Convicts and which in Architectural beauty is second to no Church in India. Powerful batteries have been erected at various points and fortifications are now in progress by Convict Labour which would have been too expensive for sanction if executed by free labour while by means of Convict skilled labour, the whole of the public buildings in the place are kept in a state of efficiency. . .the cost of the maintenance of the Convict has been yearly over and over again repaid, by the estimated value of the work performed by them. . .Footnote 79
The other issue that perturbed some Europeans concerned the public performance of Indian festivals. Historical records of nineteenth century Singapore describe a variety of Indian religious spectacles including Thaipusam, Timiti, ‘Churruck Poojah’ and Dusserah.Footnote 80 Prior to 1857, however, the most significant festivals were large-scale Muharram processions—likely introduced to Singapore by Indian Muslims,Footnote 81 many of whom were Shia, as opposed to the overwhelmingly Sunni Malay populace. Pieris, drawing on Bakhtin, theorizes that Europeans were antipathetic towards these processions because nineteenth century bourgeois values associated public displays of religiosity as ‘carnivalesque’ and accordingly to notions of ‘degeneracy, dirt, and disease’.Footnote 82 There were also concerns amongst Europeans that the fervour evident on these occasions could lead to violent outbreaks,Footnote 83 and on occasion religious-conservatives in the community, viewing these festivities as an affront to Christianity, called for a ban of these public processions:
Can anyone blame a Government professing the Christian religion for preventing insults to that religion from being publicly exhibited ?—or are they not duty bound to do so ? need I ask whether such processions as we have seen in Singapore are an insult to that religion or not ? and if they are, why not put an end to them. . .Footnote 84
To alleviate these concerns, colonial authorities occasionally restricted the public performance of religious festivals. The Indians, however, resented such measures. For example, in May 1842, when the Government refused to grant permission to the Tamil-Muslims to conduct their procession ‘all the Klings, men of every trade and professions at Singapore, struck work’ resulting in ‘inconvenience, especially among the merchants, from their being deprived of the service of their boat-men and boats’.Footnote 85 In September 1856, Indian convicts defied restrictions by carrying their Muharram processions beyond their prison lines.Footnote 86 Nevertheless, fearing reprisals, they were quick to fall into line and pleaded in the most subservient terms to the Governor, which was illustrative of their relationship with the colonial authorities: ‘[The convicts] prostrate at your Honor's feet to forgive them if they have any crime’. Praying for the Governor's permission in the future to undertake processions on their festive days, they reiterated their role as trustworthy servants who would ‘always [be] ready to obey the orders of their superiors in the event of either Fire or Chinese riots’.Footnote 87
1857
Notwithstanding the above-mentioned ‘irritants’, it would be fair to surmise that prior to 1857 the European inhabitants in Singapore did not perceive the natives of India as a threat. To understand why perceptions of Indians changed so rapidly in 1857, a brief detour of two attendant developments informing European anxieties is instructive. The first pertained to the break-out of the Arrow War—otherwise known as the Second Opium War—in China. From late October 1856, Europeans in Singapore had been inundated with reports of that war, which the local press was able to speedily publish as steamships had recently come to be used for the transmission of news.Footnote 88 That conflict was a source of concern for the European merchants in Singapore, not only because of the challenge it posed to the position of the Empire in the East, but also for private commercial reasons since many were engaged in the opium trade. The ongoing conflict in China marked the first of a chain of events that would unsettle the nerves of the European community in Singapore.
The other source of anxiety amongst Europeans was more immediate—local Chinese inhabitants had gone on strike on 1 January 1857, due to concerns over the application of the new Police and Conservancy Acts that empowered the police to put an immediate stop to processions and displays if these were deemed to be obstructive to public passage.Footnote 89 Unconfirmed reports circulating amongst European inhabitants warned of ‘imminent Chinese riots’—the English press purporting that ‘monster meetings’ of secret societies had taken place ‘in the rural districts’, and that the Chinese were intimidating Tamil-Muslim boatmen into joining the strike with the threat that if they ‘insisted in ferrying Europeans across the river,. . .the Chinese would. . .put out their eyes’.Footnote 90 At a ‘public meeting’,Footnote 91 anxious Europeans demanded that the Governor issue a proclamation calling for the re-opening of Chinese businesses and severe reprisals for intimidating the Klings.Footnote 92 Although no ‘reprisals’ were carried out, the Governor called upon key Chinese merchants to explain ‘the nature and objects of the Acts’.Footnote 93 He was also sufficiently concerned to order the mounting of large guns at strategic points in the settlement and called for an additional regiment of troops from Madras.Footnote 94 These initiatives succeeded in bringing an end to the strike, yet the fear of potential Chinese riots in Singapore continued to resonate amongst the European populace.Footnote 95 George Mildmay Dare, barely 16 at the time, noted in his diary:
Matters are still far from settled; seditious placards in Chinese are still posted about the streets, calling upon the Chinese to rebel against the Europeans and turn them out of the island, and have gone so far as to offer rewards for the heads of the Governor and some of the principal officers of the Court!. . .We are all anxious here, also for the Troops to arrive from India,. . .and we expect to have a fight on Chinese New Year's Day.Footnote 96
The great Kling case
European nerves were still unsettled when a tragedy involving a major section of the Indian populace—the Klings—occurred. In early February 1857, police-action at a Kling festival resulted in deaths and injuries to a number of Tamil-Muslims. Two coroner's inquests carried out on the deceased were followed by a trial of a European policeman charged for manslaughter that had all the makings of an E. M. Forster novel. The ‘great Kling case’—an epithet used by The Straits Times to describe the episode—extended over a period of nearly three months, and caused an uproar in the European community, bringing to the fore their racial prejudices and ushering in tensions between Europeans and sections of the Indian populace. The episode was also crucial in threatening to rupture relations between the European community and the Governor, which in turn had the effect of leaving non-official Europeans feeling emasculated, betrayed and increasingly vulnerable.
On 5 February 1857, Tamil-Muslims had gathered for a festival at their mosque in Telok Ayer when at about 10 p.m., two European policemen—Sub-Inspector Arthur Pennefather and Sergeant Hallman—ordered them to remove flags, stakes and other religious paraphernalia—that had been placed on the adjoining road. However, as they had obtained official permission to conduct the festival, the police claimed that the Tamil-Muslims were unwilling to carry out their instructions.Footnote 97 Pennefather testified that in refusing to remove the ‘obstructions’ on the road, the Imam of the mosque had retorted that ‘If the Chinese could do as they like,. . .they [the Klings] would do as they liked’.Footnote 98 A conflict ensued, whereupon the police used firearms that resulted in the death of two Tamil-Muslims—Nutter Saib and Ebram Saib—and severely wounded eleven others, including four or five boys.Footnote 99
Rumours of a Kling ‘riot’ travelled swiftly in European circles, and were magnified accordingly. Hitherto, although the Europeans had not viewed the Tamil-Muslims as a threat, nevertheless, in context of the recent challenge by Chinese inhabitants, some expressed their satisfaction that the policemen had taught the ‘natives’ an important lesson:
about 800 [Klings]. . .attacked the police, who were forced to retreat to the station. . .The Klings stormed the station, trying to set fire to it. . .so the police opened fire, knocking eighteen men over in the first volley, of whom seven were killed on the spot and eight died subsequently; the black devils thereupon ran away in all directions. . .This affair had a good effect on the natives, showing them that Europeans are not to be trifled with. . ..Footnote 100
The Straits Times also carried a tainted incident report—describing the disposition of the Klings gathered that night in menacing terms and thus justifying the actions of the European policemen and their subordinates as self-defence:
a general attack was made upon. . .[the police]. The Police party being unarmed were forced to beat a sharp retreat to the Telok Ayer station, although not until they were all more or less injured by the missiles thrown at them. A furious assault was made upon the Police station; bricks and stones were thrown with great violence against the venetians the greater part of which was beaten in. The assailants became almost frenzied, and by means of a ladder attempted to get into the Thannah. . .the violence of the infuriated mob increased, and it is said that a shot was fired at the Thannah. Apprehensive of their lives the Police resorted to the use of fire arms. . .Footnote 101
It came as no surprise then that the coroner's inquiry comprising five jurors—all Europeans—concluded in mid-February that the killing of Nutter Saib was ‘justifiable homicide’ carried out by the police ‘in the execution of their duty’.Footnote 102 The jurors went on to issue a statement that laid the blame for the aggressive display by the Indians and the ‘deplorable calamity’ squarely on the Government's lack of firmness in dealing with the Chinese inhabitants earlier that year.Footnote 103
The Police Commissioner of Singapore—Henry Somerset Mackenzie—who had studied the deputations presented at the Coroner's inquest was not convinced, and felt that the jurors had misjudged the evidence in favour of the European constables. After consulting the Governor, Mackenzie issued an order dismissing Pennefather, Hallman and a peon from the force, while lowering the ranks of several other policemen. Pennefather was also arrested and charged with the manslaughter of Ebram Saib.Footnote 104 In the Police Order Book, Mackenzie noted that the police acted rashly and provocatively; that the fire-arms, which had caused the deaths of and the injuries to the Tamil-Muslims, had been used long before there was any danger to the police or to public safety; and that no ‘discipline was maintained by the Inspectors over their European subordinates’.Footnote 105 Mackenzie's decision was vindicated by Christian Baumgarten—a Law Agent—who had been appointed to provide impartial judgement to the Governor on the issue.Footnote 106 In his report, based on a study of depositions taken during the inquest and independent investigations, Baumgarten provided vivid details of the incident pointing out that the police were in effect the aggressors, had clearly acted in a rash manner and were culpable even on the grounds of ‘murder’.Footnote 107
Pennefather's arrest sparked an uproar in the European community. The Straits Times criticized the Police Commissioner's order, and lamented the difficulties confronting the dismissed policemen and their families.Footnote 108 Sympathy for the sacked officers expanded beyond the small coterie of lobbyists to the wider European community. On 26 February, at a packed public meeting of European inhabitants, the Government was attacked for its ‘disgraceful conduct’.Footnote 109 Over 80 Europeans present at the meeting voted for resolutions that unequivocally condemned the dismissal of the European policemen, and demanded that the Governor reinstate them to the positions they had held prior to the incident.Footnote 110
Europeans were not the only group petitioning the Government over the dismissal of the policemen. In early March, 75 Indians responded with a memorial that sought the opposite, i.e., pleading with the Governor to uphold the Police Commissioner's decision. Furthermore, they went on to challenge the legitimacy of the public meeting of 26 February to represent the view of the inhabitants of Singapore:
the said meeting was not attended by Klings, Chinese or any other class of the native inhabitants and your memorialists have also been informed that a number of the most respected of the European merchants were not present and that it cannot therefore be looked upon as a meeting of the inhabitants of Singapore.Footnote 111
The Indian petition provided the embattled Governor with the basis to point out to the European lobbyists that they had no legitimate right to speak for all the inhabitants, especially on an issue pertinent to the ‘natives’ since ‘it does not appear that they had the opportunity of making known their sentiments’.Footnote 112 He concluded that he could not accept the resolutions as ‘admitted unanimously at a public Meeting of the Inhabitants of Singapore’,Footnote 113 and went on to reject their demands. His Secretary added forcefully:
these Resolutions appear to prescribe to the Executive Authorities of the Settlement the course they are to pursue in a particular case, but the Hon'ble the Governor disclaims all responsibility to a public Meeting, and declines to be guided in his Executive duties by any Resolutions adopted therein.Footnote 114
The Governor's intransigence left the non-official European elite feeling helpless and betrayed. Even more, Europeans were shocked that the Indians had the temerity to challenge them by petitioning the Governor over the issue. The rhetoric at the public meeting on 3 March personified their prejudice—‘There can be no doubt that the Europeans are the representatives of the intelligence of the settlement’.Footnote 115 Insinuating that the Governor was biased towards Indians, J. Harvey asserted that ‘in questions of importance the Governor. . .[has] invariably taken up the views unfavourable to the European community’ and emphatically declared that ‘the sooner the Settlement was rid of Mr Blundell the better’.Footnote 116 Subsequently, the Europeans gathered at the meeting resolved to document the differences between the Executive and the ‘public of Singapore’ to be sent directly to the Supreme Government, and reconciled to raise funds for the defence of Pennefather at the trial.Footnote 117
A temporary lull on the issue followed in mid-March and early April, partly because the European community was left reeling from the Governor's unrelenting position and had to come to terms with their future course of action. Attention was also diverted by an extended impasse between colonial authorities and the Chinese in Penang, where Deputy Commissioner of Police Robertson's attempt to bring to an end a Chinese theatrical performance led a conflict ‘in the course of which one Chinese was killed, two Indians were wounded. . .[and] In the clamour which ensued the crowd ran off with two of the sepoys muskets’.Footnote 118
Towards the end of April, however, the press in Singapore was abuzz again on the ‘great Kling case’. Pennefather's trial for the manslaughter of Ebram Saib began on 28 April. As far as the Indians were concerned, however, any hope for justice quickly dissipated. Amongst the jury were ‘several of those who had attended the public meeting held in protest of Pennefather's dismissal’.Footnote 119 The recorder—Robert Bolton McCausland—was said to have begun the summing-up process of the evidence by casting aspersions on the credibility of the Indian witnesses:
The Recorder. . .[observed] that the principal part of the evidence for the prosecution consisted of the testimony of a number of witnesses of a certain class, the Klings;. . .the testimony of that class of witnesses, appeared to him [the Recorder], as probably it would to the Jury, to consist of several falsehoods. . .Footnote 120
Pennefather was deemed to be not guilty by the jury. Although he was re-arrested—on the charge of the manslaughter of Nutter Saib—the recorder directed the jury to immediately acquit the prisoner.Footnote 121 Blundell, however, refused to reinstate the dismissed policemen, and in this, his judgement was supported by the Governor-General of India who rejected the demands of the European inhabitants.Footnote 122
The Indian rebellion
If the ‘great Kling case’ had fissured relations between Europeans and a section of the Indian populace in Singapore, a rupture developed in May as a constant stream of rumours and reports, revealing macabre details of the Indian Rebellion, spread like wildfire within the small community of Europeans at the settlement. From the end of May to the end of October 1857, The Straits Times—hitherto published twice a week—nearly doubled its output, delivering to its audience the latest information carried by mail steamers from the subcontinent. News of the rebellion, alongside fears that the conflict could possibly extend beyond the subcontinent, created an unheralded panic amongst Europeans so that even the slightest rumour of a security threat from local Indians sent a shiver down the spine of the European community.
Initial information of tensions in the native militia in India were published in Singapore in early March 1857. A short paragraph in The Straits Times interspersed between information on other developments in India noted that
At Barrackpore, a large military station, a disturbance had taken place amongst the native troops in consequence of it being discovered that Bullock's fat was used in the manufacture of cartridges, and a widely circulated report that the Government was about to force the native troops to become Christians. On enquiry it turned out that the mutton fat ordered to be used had been exchanged by the contractor for Bullock's fat.Footnote 123
Allaying any cause for concern, the report went on to add that the ‘caste’ matter had effectively been settled following the timely intervention of Brigadier Hearsey,Footnote 124 and there was no further coverage of the matter for over two months.
In May, however, rumours began to spread ‘in a vague uneasy way, about threatenings of coming trouble in India’.Footnote 125 Buckley conjectures that by this time possibly the transported convicts and other Indian inhabitants had ‘some news of what was in the wind’.Footnote 126 The whispers in the bazaar were soon confirmed. At 11.30 a.m. on Sunday 31 May, seven days after departing from Calcutta, the steamship Fiery Cross docked at the New Harbour in Singapore carrying newspapers and documents informing of the spread of the rebellion in northern India. Reports of the rebellion were immediately published by The Straits Times:
From Calcutta we have frightful news. . .several Native regiments have revolted and murdered all their officers. The City of Delhi has been captured and nearly every European killed, under most atrocious and revolting circumstances, and not sparing age or sex. Meerut also had fallen; even Calcutta itself was in great peril. . .Footnote 127
News of the rebellion did not spark an immediate panic amongst Europeans in Singapore. The sense of security emanated from the large number of British troops at the settlement on stopover to the war in China—the most notable of which was the contingent following the Earl of Elgin, the British High Commissioner and Plenipotentiary in China.Footnote 128 Elgin was himself troubled enough by news of the rebellion to order a light steamer to the Straits of Sunda to intercept the first instalment of troops destined for the China expedition to be redirected to India.Footnote 129
The exuberance of the European populace at Elgin's visit rapidly dissipated following his departure to Hong Kong on 23 June. At this juncture, matters began to move at a furious pace. Following the arrival of mail from India at the end of the month, The Straits Times immediately produced an ‘Extra’ informing the populace of the spread of the rebellion to the lower provinces of Bengal, detailing the numerous Indian regiments that had revolted, and reproducing accounts of the violence in northern India.Footnote 130 Particularly troubling for the European community in Singapore were reports that the 40th Regiment of the Madras Native Infantry based in Burma ‘had shewn [sic] signs of mutiny on the subject of the Enfield Rifle’.Footnote 131 Not only did this raise the possibility that the rebellion had begun to spread beyond northern India, even more alarming was that this cast aspersions on the fidelity of the Madras troops, which were the only garrisons protecting the Straits Settlements—the 14th and 38th Regiments of the Madras Native Infantry based in Singapore, Malacca and Labuan, and the 29th Regiment in Penang.Footnote 132
Official correspondences at this time, by calling specifically for European troops to be sent to India, also created the impression that potentially all Indian troops were suspect. On 11 July the Earl of Clarendon, telegraphing instructions to the British consulate in Marseille and thence to Singapore, called on the Governor:
. . .to inform the Commanding officer of any English troops arriving at Sincapore on their way to China, and the Senior Officers of the vessels commanding them that it is the direction of Her Majesty's Government that they are to proceed from Sincapore to Calcutta and place themselves at the disposal of the Governor General of India.Footnote 133
The urgency was not lost on the European community in Singapore. On 20 July European merchants in Singapore addressed Lord Elgin on his short two-day stopover there urging him to proceed to Calcutta.Footnote 134 In spite of their valiant address, the fact that large numbers of the European militia were being directed to IndiaFootnote 135 added to their insecurity.
News of the massacre at Kanpur reached Singapore on 30 July and was reported in The Straits Times on the very same day: ‘Cawnpore is fallen! Sir Hugh Wheeler killed, and every European soul, the number exceeding six hundred women and children, inclusive of 200 of our bravest Soldiers’.Footnote 136 What was more The Straits Times on 4 August reported ‘the existence of an uneasy spirit among the Mussulmans’ prevailing in Madras ‘in consequence, it is believed, of the interception of treasonable correspondence’.Footnote 137 The latter was particularly troubling not only because it reinforced concerns over the Madras troops, but also because Tamil-Muslims constituted a large segment of the Indian populace in Singapore.
The ‘seditious activities’ of Khurruck Singh
The 4 August reports sparked a meeting of distinguished European residents who immediately penned their concerns to the Governor. Their lengthy memorandum reflected the key elements of the threat perceived by the European inhabitants in Singapore at this time: A lack of trust in the fidelity of the Madras troops; the danger posed by the large number of Indian convicts ‘among whom are political offenders, who doubtless have influence among their fellow and may even keep up written communication with India at a crisis’; and a concern that major disturbances could erupt at the time of the Muharram festival.Footnote 138 Included amongst their suggested preparations for an emergency were: Europeans replacing the Indian militia at the ‘arsenal and guns on Pearls and Government Hill’—these being the most strategic military locations at the settlement; a European guard be used to supplement the sepoy lines; the Governor to make an appeal for more European troops and until these arrived, the HMS Inflexible at the Singapore harbour, on route to India, be detained till after Muharram. The appeal also called for European seamen and sailors to be provided with arms and ammunition; that immediate efforts be taken to engage Malays as policemen ‘substituting them for Natives of India’; and finally to designate ‘a place of refuge for [European] women and children’.Footnote 139
The Governor had already initiated plans to strengthen defences at the settlement through the erection of barracks at Pearls Hill suited for a complete company of European artillery that could also function as a place of refuge for European inhabitants.Footnote 140 However, from the 4 August communiqué it was clear to Blundell that the key source of the panic proliferating amongst Europeans emanated from the Indian convict settlement. Consequently, on 7 August he ordered Khurruck Singh—a Sikh political prisoner—to be incarcerated on board HMS Racehorse.Footnote 141 A former Colonel of the Lahore Durbar, Khurruck had been imprisoned in Singapore from mid-June 1850 along with Nihal Singh—also known as Bhagawan Singh or Bhai Maharaj Singh—who had led an anti-British rebellion in Lahore.Footnote 142 During their imprisonment, the correspondence of both political prisoners was subject to stringent checks and were found to contain potentially subversive phrases such as: ‘We will come within one year, send us your Slaokumnamah’ and ‘there is news of these slaves being set free’.Footnote 143 Pieris notes that a letter from Nihal Singh to Jusunent Singh containing ‘a drawing of a ship and an island, depicting Singapore. . .excited the prison authorities excessively, generating a surfeit of official correspondence’.Footnote 144 After the death of Nihal Singh, Khurruck was released in December 1856. Kept under police surveillance, he was re-convicted when two prisoners who were part of the ‘prison gentry’ made ‘deposition[s] implicating him in a plot to attack the European population while they were in Church’.Footnote 145 Although Blundell had attributed his behaviour to ‘drunken utterances of abuse’,Footnote 146 scrutiny of Khurruck Singh's conduct following his petition to the Governor for permission to go to Bengal, seemingly to support efforts against Indian rebels, found that he had maintained ‘treasonable correspondence with the native convicts at Singapore (amongst whom [were] some 60 or 70 Seikhs) for the purpose of creating a disturbance’.Footnote 147 Three days after being impounded on board the HMS Racehorse, Khurruck Singh was deported to Fort Cornwallis, Penang.
The deportation of Khurruck Singh received reticent accolade from the local English press, yet the entire incident only served to underscore European vulnerability vis-à-vis the convict settlement. George Dare penned in his diary:
Great fears have lately been entertained regarding the convicts. . .a Sikh chief Ghurruk Singh. . .has been tampering with them, and formed a plan of rising whilst all the Europeans were in church and massacring all. There are from 1,000 to 2,000 convicts of the same class as those now rebels in Bengal, and of which some eighty are Sikhs; so we are all on the look-out for a riot soon, and I am heartily glad I am the only one of our family here.Footnote 148
The approach of Muharram
Apprehensions over the threat posed by convicts at this point were closely intertwined with anxieties linked to the approach of Muharram and suspicions specifically on the allegiance of the Indian Muslim populace in Singapore. These conjectured connections were influenced by news emanating from India, which at this point contained numerous references to Muslim-led riots there alongside expectations that the rebellion could potentially escalate during Muharram.Footnote 149 Correspondingly, reports from the subcontinent during this phase of the rebellion even suggested that the revolt was doctored by Muslims:
the Hindus are already beginning to see they have put their foot into it; that the rebellion has been organized by the intriguing Mahomedans of India,. . .who have made a cat's paw of their milder and more ignorant brethren to carry out their villainous designs.Footnote 150
These aspersions resonated amongst Europeans in Singapore with the local English press singling out Muslims for sharp criticism for their refusal to contribute to a fund-raising drive organized at St Andrew's Cathedral on 9 August for the relief of fugitives arriving in Calcutta:
We have heard that some Mahomedan residents at Singapore object to contribute on the ground that to afford aid to Christians, enemies or infidels to the Muslim faith, is contrary to the principles of their religion. We pity those who seek to avail to the pretext.Footnote 151
Notwithstanding deprecation of the supposed parsimony towards Christian refugees, more troubling for the European community were the impending Muharram festivities organized by Indian convicts—The Singapore Free Press at this time described earlier processions as ‘saturnalia without restraint, their taboot. . .the gayest and. . .the noisiest to be seen on public streets’.Footnote 152 Europeans were particularly concerned by the convict procession as the convict gaol at Bras Basah was located at the heart of the European residential area.Footnote 153 On 11 August, in a move to pressure colonial authorities to ban the procession, The Straits Times and The Singapore Free Press published reports on the belligerent display of the Indian convicts during Muharram the year before. According to these reports, on 10 September 1856 a few hundred Indian convicts defied the Government order limiting their procession to the prison and
forced their way out of the lines, and carrying their taboot, and lighted by torches. . .marched. . .to the house of the Resident Councillor, where they vented their displeasure by noisy cries and excited gestures and afterwards proceeded to the Government Offices. . .where they were at last prevailed upon by two of the officers. . .to return to their quarters.Footnote 154
Ironically, these ‘transgressions’ had not received any press coverage in 1856, when the above-mentioned events had allegedly taken place. Whilst the delay raised questions of authenticity, the production of these ‘reports’ only in 1857 revealed the contrasting relationship between Europeans and transported Indian convicts a year later.
In a measure intended to calm European fears, Blundell sought to move as many Indian convicts as possible to the area outside town, calling on the municipal committee to use free labour instead of the services of ‘convict scavengers’ within a distance of two miles from the ‘European Church’.Footnote 155 On the issue of the Muharram procession however, the Governor granted the convicts permission to carry the tabut outside the prison lines with the proviso that this would be limited to the roads immediately parallel to the convict prison extending via the nearest route to the sea.Footnote 156 In response to queries by European residents, he responded that he had arrived at the decision to prevent ‘needlessly exasperating the Convict body’.Footnote 157 He admitted later, in correspondence to Cecil Beadon, Secretary to the Governor-General of India, that in effect he had granted permission ‘consequent on events in India, [as] I thought it would be unwise to bring the Troops and Convicts into collision on what might be termed a religious question and which would probably have ended in violence’.Footnote 158
Blundell's decision—effected at the crescendo of the panic engulfing the European populace—was a monumental political blunder. Feelings of angst and anger cut across the community. The Governor's attempt to reassure Europeans on 19 August that ‘these apprehensions are groundless, and that every precaution will be taken to put down any disturbance with a strong hand’ fell on deaf ears.Footnote 159 On that very day 34 Europeans and their families, representing the most prominent Banking and Mercantile firms in Singapore, submitted a written protest.Footnote 160 This was followed by a fervent memorial on 21 August from 30 Christian inhabitants of ‘Campong Bencoolen and the adjoining Campongs’, who beyond attacking the Governor's decision, expressed their views on the Bengal Muslims in no uncertain terms:
your memorialists residing as they do in a locality surrounded on all sides by convicts feel that they have no prospects of security for either life or property if the said procession is allowed. . .the conduct of the Mohamedans in Bengal shews [sic] to all who will see that there is no confidence to be placed in the promises of this Caste of Convicts—since soldiers who are supposed to be men of honor [sic], violate their most sacred pledges.Footnote 161
The press followed suit, asserting that the Governor's actions were an ‘admission of weakness’Footnote 162 that had added to the fears prevalent in the Christian community, and expressed disgust that permission had been granted for a procession of Muslim convicts in the Christian quarter when the rebellion in India had turned into ‘a religious war’ and ‘the hand of the Moslem lifted up against the Christian, whether adult or infant’.Footnote 163 The editor of The Straits Times launched a brutal tirade against transported convicts, and chastized the Government of India for making the Straits Settlements ‘the receptacle of all the felonry of its dominions,. . .[transporting] the scum of its criminal population, approaching 3,000 of the most desperate wretches. . ., without according a single European guard to protect the liege subjects of the Crown’.Footnote 164
These invectives in protest letters and print were manifestations of the European community's fear of the natives of India on the ground. As the Muharram festivities—scheduled to begin on 22 August—drew closer, rumours were rife that the convicts would ‘break loose on the Town’, and that the Madras troops were surreptitiously collaborating with them, so that when the riot took place they would not ‘fire on them’.Footnote 165 Europeans were concerned that the revolt could be ‘joined by ticket-of-leave men and the Malay and Chinese communities’.Footnote 166 Anderson wrote that the ‘feverish anxiety. . .led to women fainting in church at the slightest unexpected noise’.Footnote 167 While the list of Europeans departing from Singapore expanded,Footnote 168 those who remained armed themselves in preparation for a breakout of violence.Footnote 169 In the backdrop of the slaughter of Europeans in Kanpur and suggestions that women had been sexually violated there, a deep concern over potential humiliation in Singapore led to European women being ‘sent on board ship for protection’ for the duration of the Muharram festivities which lasted ten days.Footnote 170
In the sister colony of Penang, fears of an uprising during Muharram also reached feverish levels particularly after the arrival there of Khurruck Singh. Incarcerated at Fort Cornwallis, stories of his notoriety had travelled swiftly across the Straits. European inhabitants were concerned that Khurruck would influence a revolt amongst the large body of convicts stationed at the fort that housed the main guns defending the settlement. Furthermore, a section of the 29th Regiment Madras Native Infantry—the only garrison in Penang—had been detached to aid the war-effort in China.Footnote 171 Consequently Indian sepoys comprised nearly all the guards stationed in the fort—the only Europeans being the Commanding Officer and a Regimental Sergeant.Footnote 172 The trepidation of Europeans in Penang intensified when on 23 August—amidst the Muharram festivities—a drunken Indian sepoy entered the residence of a European officer, threatening to massacre all Europeans in the settlement.Footnote 173 Following this incident, an urgent meeting of European inhabitants pleaded with the Governor for European troops to be sent to Penang,Footnote 174 and a deputation of 50 Europeans confronted the Resident Councillor of Penang, demanding that a European-only militia replace the native Indian troops at the fort—a measure that resulted in 30 policemen, of whom ‘ten or twelve [were] European special constables’, being added to the garrison there.Footnote 175 Notwithstanding these measures to instil confidence, a number of Chinese residents in Penang ‘barricaded their shops’,Footnote 176 and many Europeans fearing for their lives scampered to Province Wellesley, or as in Singapore, took refuge on board ships in the harbour, until the Muharram festivities ended on 31 August.Footnote 177
Panic turns to rage
On 1 September 1857, the press in Singapore reflected the collective relief of the European populace when it reported that the ‘much dreaded’ Muharram festivities had passed peacefully adding with gall ‘as we had anticipated it would’!Footnote 178 Paradoxically the Indian convicts had neither prepared the tabut nor carried out a procession.Footnote 179 Their self-restraint could well have been representative of their sensitivity to the anxiety that had engulfed the European populace—or simply, as McNair states, of a tendency to ‘always avoid. . .a quarrel’.Footnote 180 But no such generous interpretation of their self-possession was fathomed by the press in the context of the rebellion, and especially following the harrowing panic over the past month during which the convicts had come to be so vilified. The Straits Times asserted that it was the unity and strength of the Christian inhabitants—as opposed to the Governor's weakness—that had left the convicts seemingly ‘panic-struck’ and prevented ‘the Islam part of the population’ from rising.Footnote 181 Rumours, however, continued to circulate amongst Europeans that the prisoners had desisted from the procession because three wealthy former convicts had influenced them ‘to forego any attempt against the public peace, lest the[ir] property. . .might be periled’.Footnote 182 Whatever the reason for the restraint shown by the convicts, the press used the respite from the panic to goad Europeans to demand that the Straits Settlements be freed ‘from the ill-starred control of the Bengal potentates’.Footnote 183 In a sublimely prescient moment, The Straits Times declared that
the Public desire that the Crown would take the Straits under its immediate rule. . .cannot be unknown to the Government of India—its progress and consummation will probably be recorded by the pen of the historian in a decade of years. . .Footnote 184
Meanwhile authorities in India, unaware of the August panic and the effervescent rage amongst Europeans in Singapore, cast the die that propelled opposition further by calling on the Straits Settlements to take in the most dangerous criminals from India, i.e. those sentenced to more than three years imprisonment, to alleviate the overcrowded conditions of Indian jails.Footnote 185 The press, deprecating the decision to send a batch of 70 convicts ‘of the most desperate character’ from Alipore Jail and nine other political offenders from Bombay including ‘the rascally Moulvie of Poonah’, urged Europeans to ‘repudiate the contamination cast upon our shores by the Government of India’.Footnote 186 A public meeting of European inhabitants on 15 September spoke at length voicing their concerns over the decision to send convict mutineers.Footnote 187 That issue weighed heavily on gathering support for the two monumental resolutions that were passed at that meeting. The first supported the ‘Calcutta petition’, in which British inhabitants there had demanded that the British Crown replace the East India Company in governing India. The second resolution, hitherto possibly the most pivotal recorded in the political history of Singapore, declared without dissent:
That the Petition to Parliament set forth the grievances under which the Straits Settlements have laboured during the Government of the East India Company, and pray to be placed directly under the Crown, with a separate Government, and not, as at present, under a delegated authority in India.Footnote 188
Notwithstanding these monumental petitions, the controversy over the incarceration of Indian convicts in the Straits Settlements, particularly of those involved in the rebellion, continued to sizzle long after. The first rebel prisoners arrived on 19 October on the Earl Grey, which transported 17 male and two female convicts, amongst whom five were reported to be mutineers.Footnote 189 The headline press stories of Delhi being retaken by the British and the imprisonment of the Mughal king did little to curtail the movement now in place amongst Europeans to demand an end to the transportation of Indian convicts.Footnote 190 To galvanize support, the press in November frequently reported on violence in the prison lines, the most gruesome detailing the ‘cold blooded’ murder of Bombay prisoner Bhogia by the Bengali convict Juddoonath Day.Footnote 191
On 17 November, at a packed public meeting, which also included some Chinese representatives, members resolved unanimously to ‘firmly [protest] against this Settlement being any longer used for penal purposes, except for its own criminals’.Footnote 192 Ironically, Governor Blundell, who had long exalted the contributions of Indian convicts to the development of Singapore and had remonstrated sharply against earlier aspersions cast upon them, gave ‘hearty support’ to the petition.Footnote 193 Attached to the memorial that was delivered from his offices to the Government of India on 26 November 1857,Footnote 194 he added his firm opposition to sending rebel convicts who ‘entertain[ed] the most deadly sentiments of hatred and revenge against us’.Footnote 195 On 23 December 1857, the Governor General of India, noting Blundell's views, responded by informing him that ‘a new penal settlement in the Andamans was under consideration’.Footnote 196
Conclusion
This paper has focused on how local and transnational developments converged in 1857 to fabricate a fear of Indian inhabitants within the small but influential community of Europeans in Singapore. Perceived in preceding years as ‘harmless settlers’,Footnote 197 and recognized for their contribution to the security and development of the settlement, Indians had come to be demonized by the end of 1857. Veena Das reflects that in periods of crisis, there is a propensity for rumours to ‘[construct] images of self and other from which the subjectivity of experience has been evacuated’.Footnote 198 Likewise, an assessment of the actions of Indian inhabitants in Singapore in 1857 shows that they, in effect, had done little to justify the transformation in European perceptions towards them. A local dispute—the ‘great Kling case’—ushered a break in relations between Europeans and Indians in early 1857, yet the change in attitudes of Europeans was more an expression of their own vulnerability rather than a response to the actual actions of the Indians. Similarly, following the news of the rebellion in India, Indian inhabitants in Singapore came to be perceived as an existential threat by panic-stricken Europeans, even if, on the ground, they had done little to justify that view. The fabrication of an Indian ‘menace’ in Singapore in 1857 was thus largely the product of factors extraneous to the actions of the Indian inhabitants themselves—rumours, newspaper editorials, and reports of developments from distant shores that collectively wreaked havoc on the nerves of an anxious European populace to produce a panic.
This paper adds to recent scholarly literature on the global reverberations of the Indian rebellion of 1857. By analysing the underlying local antecedents and the grassroots’ experience of the rebellion, this paper provides a fuller explanation of why, as Clare Anderson, Marina Carter and Crispin Bates have noted, some of the most vociferous opposition to the transportation of Indian convict mutineers emanated from the Straits Settlements.Footnote 199 That opposition, in turn, had long term repercussions on the position of Indians in Singapore. In 1859, the Governor-General of India, Lord Canning, noting the antagonism of European inhabitants in Singapore, stated that the Government of India would have no difficulty in putting an end to ‘the transportation of convicts to the Straits, especially to Singapore’ since ‘the Andamans have been occupied as a convict settlement’.Footnote 200 In 1860, the transportation of convicts from India to the Straits Settlements—hitherto crucial for the infrastructural development of Singapore—ceased.Footnote 201 That decision had serious demographic implications for Indians in the settlement. In 1860, the ‘natives of India’ in Singapore numbered 12,973, and constituted the second largest component of the total populace after the Chinese. Between 1860 and 1871, when the total population of Singapore increased from 81,734 to 97,111, the number of Indian inhabitants actually declined to 10,754, lagging behind both the Chinese and Malay populace.Footnote 202 Although direct evidence has not been forthcoming, it is possible that this reduction in number was not simply an outcome of the end of convict transportation but may also have been connected to a general deterioration in relations between Europeans and Indians in Singapore in the aftermath of the 1857 rebellion. This had the effect, over the next decade, of stifling migration or even encouraging return migration amongst Indians. Writing in the early 1860s, John Cameron noted that the ‘[Klings] have failed to obtain any measure of good-will. . .from the Europeans’ and noted that ‘latterly the arrivals of this class under the coolie system have very much decreased in number’.Footnote 203
Beyond Indians per se, the 1857 panic triggered developments that left an imprint on the political history of Singapore. Following from the resolutions of European inhabitants in Singapore in September 1857, a debate ensued in the British parliament in April 1858 on whether control over the Straits Settlements should be transferred from the Government of India to the Colonial Office. Asked for his views on the matter, Lord Canning's response was decisive. His Minute recorded in November 1859 barely concealed his exasperation with the lobbying of the European inhabitants in Singapore in 1857. Noting that although ‘the strong desire for transfer which prevailed among [European inhabitants]. . .in 1857, has very considerably subsided’, he nevertheless held strongly to the view that ‘no good and sufficient reasons [exist]. . .for continuing the administration of the Straits Settlements on its present footing’, stating in no uncertain terms that ‘most assuredly, India has gained nothing by it’.Footnote 204 In 1867, political control of the Straits Settlements was transferred from the Government of India to the Colonial Office in London, which marked a decisive change in Singapore's position in the Empire, and simultaneously left Indians in a confirmed minority position in Singapore.
