In the first decade of the twentieth century, India was still under British rule. In practice, this meant that the huge collection of territories that made up the Raj were run by a massive bureaucracy: the Indian Civil Service. This was an innocuous-sounding name for a powerful, and in some ways deeply corrupt, entity. The evils and virtues of imperialism continue to be debated, and the story of British rule in India has been told many times in many ways, but I want to focus on one person who does not leap out from the pages of history books.
In the first decade of the twentieth century a white British woman traveling between Lahore and Multan to be married, was raped and murdered on board a train. The account that I found of this little tragedy did not record the date of the crime, nor the name of the woman (or of her attacker), and initially there was little hope of solving the mystery of her murder. Train crime was always difficult to solve. Trains in many ways lie at the heart of the problem of British imperialism in India – their introduction was embraced by the people as a form of mobility, even as it destroyed traditional economic structures, and helped facilitate the mass export of grain that would prompt decades of famine. Travel on them was anonymous, confused and noisy. But on this occasion the culprit (‘an Indian Christian’) was discovered quickly and efficiently by a young policeman from Gujrat. The murderer was executed.
This was but the start of Abdul Aziz’s distinguished career as a detective. Later on, he played important parts in preventing mutinies in the First World War, and then combating ‘terrorist outrages’ in the interwar period. It was said that he was the best detective in India, and he retired as something of a minor celebrity to both his colleagues and, according to a small obituary that I unearthed at the British Library, the general public. It was from colorful newspaper editors, no doubt, that he acquired the nickname: ‘The Sherlock Holmes of India’. According to his obituary:
Abdul Aziz was an ideal investigator, combining determination, tact, patience and integrity; qualities which made his rapid advancement inevitable. He was a man of quiet dignity whose unassuming demeanor made him popular with all his colleagues. He was known as the Sherlock Holmes of India since he worked out the most intricate and difficult cases which had defied solution.
I chose this story because, in the first place, I was enchanted by the idea of an Indian Sherlock Holmes. The very fact that he was called this has so many interesting echoes. ‘A brilliant Indian detective? Of course he is like Sherlock Holmes!’ The whole story also fits all to well with our present-day image of the British as obsessed orientalists – part of Aziz’s ability was getting to the heart of the mysteries of the orient, just as Holmes somehow penetrated the mysterious and scary (to fin-de-siecle Britons) depths of darkest London. Having an Indian Sherlock Holmes in this way made sense – it was the idea of rationality conquering enchantment coming full circle to from the great Imperial city, to the Empire, and back again.
The other uncertainty about this story is the political context descriptions of his work disguised. Perhaps this is clearer when placed alongside another obituary in the same file. This one praised an English police worker for his ability with local Indians, from whom he could readily extract confessions by tying them in a vermin-infested bag overnight. This practice showed how well he ‘understood’ the Indian mindset (in fact, the obituary suggested that Kipling’s Kim was based on this particularly policeman). To us, this is blatant torture, and such a confession would not hold up in a court in India or Britain today. There is a lot left unsaid in Aziz’s obituary. Were the ‘terrorist outrages’ also nationalist protests, part of a revolutionary movement against unjust political oppression? Who were Aziz’s colleagues, and who was the ‘public’ who praised his actions? Was this a European or an Indian public? These police were working in the service of a strange, savage (in its own, bureaucratic way) and ultimately unsustainable empire. Public order is always political, too.
Source: India Office Records, British Library