The British extortionist who built Bombay

Book review of The Arthur Crawford Scandal: Corruption, Governance and Indian Victims

In July 2018, Parliament passed the Prevention of Corruption Act that, among other things punished the bribe giver with incarceration of up to seven years. This provision was hailed as a step towards curbing corruption in a country notorious for it. So what can possibly go wrong when you go after the bribe givers and treat them on a par with the bribe takers? A scandal in British India involving the first municipal commissioner of Bombay, Arthur Crawford, could well provide insights into that. Former US ambassador Michael D. Metelits’ book  The Arthur Crawford Scandal: Corruption, Governance and Indian Victims meticulously details what happens when those in power are entrusted to punish one of their own for corruption and how their biases leads to collateral damage to those who dared to stand up against the misdeeds of the powerful.
 
The book is about the infamous Arthur Crawford corruption scandal that resonated both in India and Britain in the late 19th century. Crawford was the man credited with changing the face of urban Bombay as its first municipal commissioner by improving the city’s infrastructure. He had a market named after him in the city — officially the first building to be lit up with electricity in the country — till its moniker was changed post-independence to be named after Maharashtrian reformer Jyotiba Phule. Such is Crawford’s legacy that some people in the city still seek directions for “Crawford market” instead of “Jyotiba Phule market” .
 
Mr Metelits’ book is a comprehensive account of all that was wrong with the executive and judiciary in the British era — which will remind readers of India as it stands in 2020. It is a punctilious examination of the trial against Crawford and his Indian acolyte Hanmantrao, how Hanmantrao was convicted even as Crawford escaped the noose and how those Indian officials who testified against Hanmantrao and Crawford became the biggest victims of the scandal perpetrated by none other than Crawford himself.
 
As the Commissioner of the central division of Bombay Presidency, Crawford was notorious for extracting bribes from junior ranking officials (called mamlatdars ) to fund his extravagant lifestyle and save for his post-retirement kitty. Crawford, as the commissioner, had the power to appoint, promote, transfer and retain these mamlatdars, who in turn had limited magisterial powers in their respective administrative divisions or  talukas  and were primarily tasked with administering land revenue. Crawford, in effect, had the power to make or break any of the 76 such officials who reported to him. Crawford is alleged to have used this extreme power over his subordinates to extract bribes by threatening them with transfers to inhospitable places, stopping their promotions and procrastinating on their appointment.
 
As a man in high public office, Crawford made sure that any money trail could not be traced to him. All bribes were collected by Hanmantrao, who would then discreetly hand them over to Crawford. As rumours of Crawford’s corruption grew, it caught the attention of the Lord Reay, then governor of Bombay. He summoned his investigative officers to probe rumours of Crawford’s extortion network. The challenge was to get people who had paid Crawford to speak up against him. Investigators also had to piece together documents, eyewitnesses and corroborating witnesses to testify against Crawford so that he could be prosecuted for bribery under the Indian Penal Code, 1860. The surest way to do that was to get the same Indian officials who had been forced to bribing to protect their jobs to testify against Crawford. As Mr Metelits notes this would be fraught with dangers for the Indian officials. In effect, the trial of Arthur Crawford became a test case of what in the modern world would become the whistle-blower’s predicament. These days, many nations in the world have laws to protect whistle-blowers, which were non-existent in colonial times. The author notes, “It simply did not pay to be a whistleblower and there was no such thing as a sting operation.”

The Arthur Crawford Scandal: Corruption, Governance and Indian Victims

Author: Micheal D. Metelits

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Price:  Rs 1,295

Pages: 243