Chandigarh: There is a delicious irony surrounding the recent revelation by an archivist in Tamil Nadu that Thomas Babington Macaulay, the ostensibly upright British politician responsible for crafting the Indian Penal Code (IPC) in 1834, paid a bribe that same year to extricate himself from an awkward situation concerning the amorous antics of one of his retainers.
This juicy – but little known-disclosure by the Nilgiri Documentation Centre (NDC) that was reported by the Times of India earlier this week can, in hindsight, be graded in two ways: it can be indulgently dismissed as a foible by an English Burra Saheb of the East India Company, resorted to under supposedly compelling circumstances.
Or alternately, it can be construed that even this seemingly incorruptible IPC creator was not above bribery, in an act no different 188 years later from today’s Indian motorist who pays off a traffic policeman to dodge a challan or sidestep some other misdemeanour, or a criminal who bribes his way to freedom.
The incident involving Macaulay also puts paid to the widely held belief by generations of Indians that Angrez officers of the Raj, especially one as supposedly upright as the architect of the IPC were honest, law-abiding, and principally insulated from either offering or accepting bribes. In Punjab, for instance, old timers still nostalgically claim in today’s milieu, rife with pervasive corruption and venality that the honesty and morality of the Gora (White) Colonial administrators, especially in the judiciary, remains unrivalled in India.
Meanwhile, the bribery episode, concerning Macaulay which occurred in Ooty in April 1834 and is documented in Reminiscence of an Indian Judge by Francis Lascelles and disclosed by the NDC is instructive. At the time it occurred, Macaulay, who was a revered East India Company employee, historian and eminent British politician had travelled seven days by palanquin from Madras to Ooty to attend the swearing in of Lord William Bentick, then governor of Calcutta, as India’s first Governor General, in the charming and cool environs of the newly erected Ootacamund Club.
After this ceremony was completed, Macaulay extended his Ooty sojourn for three months during which period one of his palanquin bearers formed a liaison with a local woman, holding out the eventual promise of marriage as an inducement to advance his affair. The relationship, however, was unknown to Macaulay, but when he began his return journey by palanquin to Madras his passage was abruptly halted by an irate mob of locals near Ooty’s St Stephen’s Church.
The irate throng, unaware of Macaulay’s majesty, unceremoniously seized the amorous palanquin bearer and called upon him to vindicate his promise of betrothal to his sweetheart, or face serious consequences. Matters turned serious, and presumably under Macaulay’s direction, the entire official procession diverted swiftly to the offices of the district commanding officer who provided protection to the British officer and his column, including the sinful palanquin bearer.
Lascelles writes that a short while later, Macaulay and his party emerged and continued, unimpeded on their way to Madras. The excited mob, for its part, quietly disbanded, returning to the nearby hills from where they had descended to try and enforce an honourable settlement for one of their womenfolk.
“I accosted one (of the crowd) who appeared to be the leader and asked him what had taken place,” stated Lascelles. He replied that “Tom Macaulay Sahib was a very good gentleman…he gave (us) Rs 100”, a handsome amount in those days, which Lascelles declared could have bought 100 acres of land in Ooty.
The seemingly affronted Lascelles goes on to note that despite efforts to keep the incident from reaching Bentick’s ears, the Governor General had right away learnt of the incident from Tom the barber, who it transpired had assisted Macaulay in his bribery endeavours which facilitated his palanquins-and its bearers-exit from Ooty. Bentick, from his side, dismissed the incident as a ‘silly affair’ which in turn led to Macaulay in Niligiri social circles being re-christened ‘Silly Tom’, instead of ‘Lucky Tom’, as he was earlier known.
“The bribery incident involving Macaulay is merely an indication that even the high-minded slip up and compromise when faced with immediate personal inconveniencies and difficulties,” NDC’s founding head and former banker Dharmalingam Venugopal told The Wire. It was entirely a private matter for which Macaulay obviously paid the bribe and was no reflection on the IPC he had already drafted when the incident occurred, the archivist and conservationist added magnanimously from his base at Kannerimukku Village in the picturesque Nilgiri mountains from where he has run the NDC since 1985.
However, that being said, Macaulay would no doubt have known that in keeping with IPC’s Section 171E, he was criminally liable for his actions in bribing the mob in Ooty in an offence that was punishable with imprisonment of up to 12 months or a fine, or both. The IPC, which was drafted the same year as the Ooty episode and submitted to the Council of India’s Governor-General 12 months later, defined bribery as ‘gratification to any person with the object of inducing him or any other person to exercise any (electoral) right or of rewarding any person for having exercised any such right’. This classification persists even today.
Hence, prima facie Macaulay, the eminent jurist erred and paradoxically was liable to prosecution under statutes he himself had defined, but cleanly got away.
Obviously, even two centuries earlier, laws in India simply did not catch up even with the privileged who had made them. These were meant only for the hoi polloi.