Meos Up!

Unlike the double-chinned Aga Khan and many a do-nothing Indian potentate, His Highness the Maharaja of small Alwar keeps in lean, hard physical condition, keeps his small army in the pink of fighting trim.* He is proud that his polo team won the Open Cup at the 1903 Delhi Durbar, proud of his prowess at polo and racquets. In London at the First India Round Table Conference he won prominence by proposing that India should be known in future "not as the Federation of India but as the United States of India because that sounds more grand!" Last week events popped in Alwar. Her hard, smart Maharaja had an uprising on his hands slightly too big for his 500 hard, smart troops.

It started with the Meos, a fiercely bearded Mohammedan tribe, who attempted to "organize" Hindu shopkeepers in the village of Govindgarh. The shopkeepers appealed to the Maharaja, who sent a Hindu magistrate and 100 soldiers, who promptly arrested 25 Meos. There was shooting. Tribesmen with rifles appeared from nowhere, and up in the hills the drums began beating, calling more and still more to the attack.

Retreat to the capital was blocked. Troops, magistrate and the 25 prisoners were besieged all night in the local revenue office by at least 3,000 tribesmen, who, when they got bored shooting at the soldiery, improved their time by breaking a Hindu idol, tearing up sacred books, and hanging a priest upside down from a tree. A few days later 15,000 Meos were under arms. Then the Imperial Raj, the Government of His Britannic Majesty, took action.

From Delhi an infantry regiment, three cavalry squadrons and four cars of the Royal Tank Corps moved down on Alwar, and before them the rioting Meos vanished like snow in summer. British correspondents cluttered the cables with stories pointing out how necessary to the peace of India are Britain's troops.

*Unlike the Moslem Aga Khan who sells his bath water to Moslem priests, is paid his weight in gold for it every year and therefore keeps as fat as possible, the Maharaja of Alwar distributes every year his weight in silver to the poor. Nowadays this silver largesse runs to about $500.

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