Highlight’s of Brown’s letter to the Secretary to Government in the Secret and Political Department, Fort St. George, dated November 23, 1837, Anjarukundy

Brown was in Tellicherry when fugitives from South Kanara first brought news of the disturbances there. On April 3rd, one of them, a Koombla (a sea port south of Mangalore) merchant, told him the centre of the disturbances was Lower Coorg, and that the number of men of all arms he saw assembled was about 200. Many wealthy and respectable Hindu fugitives were then living in of Tellicherry. They were not at all worried by the disturbances, and expressed their surprise at the pusillanimity of the persons who had fled from such a danger and such opponents.

On 5th morning, Brown returned to his property, situated about 25 miles from Coorg, and separated from it by thinly inhabited mountain and forest. Brown travelled by the road he had built through a neighbouring jungle. His store-houses were packed with valuable property, besides containing more than Rs 31,000 in cash. Both, the house and store-houses, were unprotected and easily approachable. In 1803, it had been plundered and burned to the ground, and the plantations destroyed. His father and family lost everything.

On reaching his estate, Brown dispatched persons to Virajpet and other places in Coorg to ascertain the situation. They reported that everything was perfectly quiet and tranquil, all transactions going on as usual, and numerous Kodavas were transporting salt, grain, and bullocks, as usual, between Cannanore and the Coast. The persons sent to Virajpet returned after attending one of the weekly markets held there. They reported that the throng of people was so great, particularly of people from Mysore, that the market had in fact lasted two days instead of one. Postal services were normal.

Brown was, therefore, astonished on the morning of April 8, to find a crowd of people at his door wanting to sell their pepper to him. Brown bought the pepper at Re 1/ candy. The crowds of sellers were even greater on 9th. That day, Brown learned that every shop in Tellicherry and Cannanore had been shut, and no one was buying pepper. Pepper poured in on the 10th despite Brown’s attempt to calm the sellers and advising them not to be alarmed, but to return quietly to their homes with their pepper. They would not listen. They said a ship (the Eamont) and pattamars, with the wives and children of Englishmen had arrived from Mangalore, and had been detained at Tellicherry. They suspected that the English were preparing to leave. Their feeling of security in the strength and stability of the government had received a fatal and alarming shock.

Brown continued to buy pepper. Between April 7 and 30 he bought Rs 16,986 worth in quantities big and small. By May 22, he had purchased 223,173 pounds of pepper worth Rs 25,189 worth. He estimated he would lose between Rs 8,000 to 10,000 when it was sold in England.

On April 18, circumstances required Brown to return to Tellicherry. Here, he learned the raja and principal persons there had secreted their gold and valuables, and were ready to flee to Travancore. Public confidence was first shaken by the arrival on April 4 at Tellicherry, of a pattamar carrying five ladies from Mangalore. This was exacerbated by the arrival of the Eamont on April 6 at Cannanore, bringing the other ladies and children, two gentlemen, and the two judges of Mangalore. The latter had officially reported to the government of the futility of saving Mangalore, and that its abandonment by all the Europeans and sepoys had been agreed to unanimously and unsuccessfully attempted on April 4th.

Anxious to learn about the situation in Mangalore, where he possessed property, Brown sent a messenger there, and asked him to bring back some of the rebel ammunition for examination. Hadjee Oomur and Abdul Lalif, very respectable and opulent Muslim merchants of Mangalore, witnesses to the two attacks, testified that the number of armed insurgents was small.

On April 15, troops from Bombay reached Mangalore. Others from Cannanore and Mysore had preceded them. On April 20th, an Englishman rode at reckless speed on his foaming horse to the beach, three miles from his house, sat on a stone, and started reading aloud to a group of others including Brown, from a letter. It said "that all Canara was in revolt, all Mysoor and all Coorg ready to rise, and that the most formidable and extensive insurrection India ever saw was on the eve of breaking out." He had spread panic to others on the road, and cursed the collector for keeping a large sum in the treasury at Tellicherry, as it would tempt the Coorgs to attack. He strongly suggested it should be loaded on boats and taken to safety. This person was no other than the first judge of the Provincial Court, the senior-most civil servant, and then the judge of the criminal sessions circuit court in Kanara. Brown believed he was also responsible for disseminating such information to newspapers throughout the country. He also accused the inhabitants of Tellicherry of treasonable intentions despite their having proved their “unshaken loyalty and fidelity” to the British Government for over a century.

This man, though having lived in these regions for the past 12 years of his service, had kept aloof from Indians, and consequently, knew nothing about them. Yet, his voluminous reports to the Court of Directors were considered accurate assessments of the state of Kanara and Malabar. This First Judge who presided over the criminal, civil, and magisterial court, received an annual remuneration of Rs 42,000. Brown questioned his sense of duty to the Government, when instead of calming the public, he set about doing exactly the opposite. He feared his conduct towards Indians would prejudice them against everything English, and turn the country into one “bristling with armed men.”

Such hysteria had made everyone in the Bombay Presidency believe that the Kodavas, Moplas, Nairs, in fact the entire coast was in a state of rebellion. Papers and publications spread this calumnious misinformation against a distant and prostrate people who have neither the means of knowing what was written, nor the ability to expose such falsehood. These reports compromised millions of innocent and defenceless men, led to the proclamation of martial law in Kanara, and to all the unavoidable excesses resulting from its military occupation. As most Indians did not have access to newspapers, a free press was to them “what the sun is to the blind.” Consequently, as they could not defend themselves, it was the duty of government to find out the truth of such reports and publically correct them. After waiting for nearly two months in vain after British authority was re-established in Kanara in the hope of seeing some effort in this direction, Brown deemed it his duty to address the government.

His confidential letters had barely reached Madras, when copies of them were transmitted to Mangalore. Instead of correction, the government resorted to rewarding the very officials who had deserted Mangalore, introducing martial law, and a cover up. Brown learnt that in October, the town crier went about the streets of Mangalore with a government order forbidding anyone to speak of the late disturbances, under pain of being jailed. The magistrate was vested with the power to pardon any collaborator although, by law, such power was vested solely in the governor, upon the recommendation of the judiciary for certain crimes that excluded rebellion.

By mid-September, the Special Judicial Commission had tried 200 persons. Brown estimated this number would be at least 500 by February. In addition to this number were those executed by Martial Law, and who had died in jail. Many of those executed did not receive a proper trial. By its conduct, the government demonstrated that the authority at Mangalore, “exalted by power and praise,” were prepared to exact that obedience of the people “with all the physical force of the Empire,” a course of action that “would goad the Natives of Canara into rebellion, to imbue every man in the Province with an indelible spirit of hatred and abhorrence of the British Government.”

While asserting that only a strict, impartial, and public inquiry made without respect to persons or authorities, would expose the breakers of the law and the fomenters of sedition, Brown asked why, even after seven months, the attempted abandonment of Mangalore by every officer, civil and military, on April 4 had remained unquestioned by the government. Citing the prevailing practice by which an officer entrusted with the care of a vessel that was lost or abandoned was judged by a competent court on his culpability in having failed to discharge the trust reposed in him, Brown emphatically stated that the culpability of government officers in this case was far more serious: “it was no vessel of the Empire, it was a part of the Empire itself…”

Brown makes a devastating comparison with this abandonment by the entire government machinery against such a minor force of indisciplined peasants with its defence by a small British force against Tipu in 1783-84: “Mangalore, the grave of hundreds of a garrison of a few thousand (3546) Europeans and Sepoys, who, under their heroic leader Major Campbell, successfully resisted for nine consecutive months the whole army of the Sultan of Mysore, amounting to 60,000 horse, 30,000 disciplined Sepoys, 600 French Infantry under Col. Cossigny, Lally's corps of Europeans and Natives, a French troop of dismounted cavalry commanded by an Officer of the King of France, irregular troops to the amount of many thousands, and nearly one hundred pieces of artillery. They resisted, until two-thirds of the garrison were sick, and the rest had scarcely strength to sustain their arms, in which state they marched to Tellicherry, with their arms, accoutrements, and all the honours of war."

Brown concluded: “To preserve silence, on the subjects of this letter, would be treason to the people of England.” And, it may be added, to the justice due to the people condemned in the aftermath.