Empire of the Sikhs (36 page)

A particularly moving account of unflinching heroism facing certain death records a last stand by Sardar Sham Singh Attariwala, one of the most respected chieftains of the Sikhs. Cunningham
again: ‘The traitor, Tej Singh … fled on the first assault, and, either accidentally or by design, sank a boat in the middle of the bridge of communication. But the ancient Sham Singh remembered his vow; he clothed himself in simple white attire, as one devoted to death, and calling on all around him to fight for the Guru, who had promised everlasting bliss to the brave, he repeatedly rallied his shattered ranks, and at last fell a martyr on a heap of his slain countrymen.'
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One of the best summings-up of the battle was ‘under such circumstances of discreet policy and shameless treason was the battle of Sabraon fought'.
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Even in victory Hardinge was unable to show grace. In a proclamation issued on 14 February 1846 he referred to the crossing of the Sutlej into Punjab as ‘having been forced upon him' for the purpose of ‘effectually protecting the British provinces and vindicating the authority of the British Government, and punishing the violators of treaties and the disturbers of the public peace'.
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Thus was ‘the authority of the British Government' – which came into existence in India only after the Mutiny of 1857-8 – claimed by the head of a trading company, clothing age-old aims of pilferage and plunder in noble oratory.

The British acquired through the Treaty of Lahore, signed on 9 March 1846, the territories of the Sikh state lying south of the Sutlej; they also gained the entire territory of 11,408 square miles between the Sutlej and Beas; but for a few battalions the Sikh army would be disbanded; the Sikhs would pay an indemnity of £1.5 million for war expenses; Kashmir and Hazara were also taken over by the British. On 5 March Gulab Singh was declared an independent sovereign and vested with the title of Maharaja, of the territories in his possession – and also those which the British might reward him with. And reward him they did. Through a separate agreement signed on 16 March 1846, they sold him Kashmir and Hazara for 7,500,000 rupees or £1 million (but on Gulab Singh's request the British exchanged Hazara for the Jammu-Jhelum belt). Thus was the state of Jammu and Kashmir formed and treason rewarded by the grateful British. Cunningham describes Gulab Singh's investiture as sovereign of his new territories on 15 March. ‘On this occasion “Maharaja” Gulab Singh stood up, and, with joined hands, expressed his gratitude to the British viceroy – adding, without however any ironical meaning, that he was indeed his
Zurkharid,
or gold-boughten slave!'
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THE DISMANTLING OF THE SIKH EMPIRE IN THE 184OS

The British, too, did well out of the entire deal. ‘Half a million, the total expenses of the war to the E.I. Co.,' read a cryptic comment by Hardinge to Ellenborough when he submitted the Statement of War Charges to London. The figure was arrived at thus: the cost of the sixty days Sutlej campaign was £2 million, of which a million was earned by selling Kashmir to Gulab Singh, and another half a million came in the form of indemnity from the Lahore Durbar. ‘From a financial point of view, the First Sikh War was one of the cheapest …' What this arithmetic did not indicate was how high the Company's profit actually was. It was clearly a great deal, since the treaty gave the British more than one-third of the Sikh empire's territory and added an annual revenue of 3 million rupees to the revenues of the Company, and good deals were what trading companies – and empire-builders, too – revelled in.

A sad footnote to the Kashmir deal was provided by the celebrated Urdu poet Hafiz Jullundari:

Loot li insaan ki qismat pachattar lakh mein

Bik gayee Kashmir ki jannat pachattar lakh mein.

‘A beautiful heritage was sold for 750,000 rupees. The paradise of Kashmir was given away for 750,000 rupees.'

The unstated aim of the First Treaty of Lahore was to consolidate British control of the Sikh state, to be followed in time by outright annexation. The new governor-general who arrived in January
1848 to take over from Hardinge was the Marquis of Dalhousie, variously described as ‘ever-excitable' and ‘over-strung'. He was hardly of a temperament suited to implementing statesmanlike policies to sustain a sensible relationship with the most turbulent part of the subcontinent. The man who had already been appointed to oversee Punjab's administration from 1 January 1847 was Henry Lawrence, the British resident at Lahore. He began by reinstating Lal Singh and Tej Singh as prime minister of the Sikh state and commander-in-chief of its army. He turned a blind eye to Lal Singh's arbitrary confiscation for himself of several
jagirs
belonging to the Khalsa. Lal Singh, who also wished to replace the governor of Multan with his own brother but couldn't, over-reached himself by trying to get the Lahore Durbar's representative in Kashmir to refuse to hand over the province to Gulab Singh. The British felt he had gone far enough and expelled him from Punjab. Tej Singh was also removed and created Raja of Sialkot on 7 August 1847.

The British now became busy entrenching themselves in Punjab. Relentlessly, and with a clear sense of purpose, they were tightening their hold on Punjab; familiarizing themselves with every stratum of this region with its extraordinary diversity of people, religions, languages, natural resources and beliefs. To make their hold more secure the British insisted on a Second Treaty of Lahore, signed at Bhyrowal on 22 December 1846, which made the once-powerful Sikh empire a virtual protectorate of the British.

When the stakes are high there can be no squeamishness about means and methods. The British showed none when it came to Ranjit Singh's last son and heir. Dalip Singh was separated from his mother, the Regent Jindan Kaur, in 1847 at the age of eight when she was exiled from Lahore and placed under the guardianship of Sir John Login, governor of the Lahore Citadel, in 1849. He was banished from the Punjab in February 1850 for fear of some of Punjab's resentful Sikhs rallying around him and sent to
Fatehgarh in Central India. On 8 March 1853, at the age of fifteen, he was quietly converted to Christianity at Fatehgarh. The governor-general's role in not only uprooting and banishing him from the land of his forefathers but also in his conversion is best summed up in Dalhousie's words. In a letter to Dalip Singh he wrote: ‘I earnestly hope that your future life may be in conformity by the precepts of that religion, and that you may show to your countrymen in India an example of a pure and blameless life, such as is befitting a Christian prince.'
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Although publicly Dalhousie went out of his way to stress that Dalip Singh had converted by his own free will, in a letter to Sir George Couper he wrote: ‘Politically, we would desire nothing better, for it destroys his influence for ever.'
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Dalip Singh departed for Britain on 19 April 1854, and that was the last he saw of the land of his birth. At the time of his death in exile, in an insignificant hotel in Paris on 22 October 1893, he was alone and thousands of miles away from the magnificent setting from which he had been forcibly exiled by the British – their way of erasing all that remained of their once worthy foe and his empire. A newspaper report of his death commented: ‘When the son and heir to Ranjit Singh died, there was no one with him to close his eyes.'
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The government of the Sikh realm, some face-saving devices aside, was now in British hands. In the very year of the fall of the Sikh empire a British writer gave this assessment of the situation: ‘The Government of Lahore may be said to be annihilated. In appearance, it exists: there is a king, a prime minister, and an army. But one and all are dependent on the British power! The capital of the country is not garrisoned by Sikhs. It is entirely in the hands of the paramount power, whose soldiers are lent for a time to preserve the semblance of a government, but in reality to keep
possession of the advantages already gained, until the season of the year shall enable the Governor-General to annex the whole country to the British possessions.'
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Considering the mixed bag of district commissioners, revenue collectors, political agents, engineers, troop commanders and traders who had fanned out across the sprawling Sikh domain, sparks could be expected to fly, given the volatile nature of the Sikhs and the domineering ways of the British. And so it transpired in Multan at the end of 1847, where by April 1848 a small disturbance had developed into a major rebellion. Diwan Mulraj, the able governor of Multan whose father Diwan Sawan Mal had also been a capable and admired governor of this strategically important region, was for various reasons eased out by the British. The troops of the Lahore Durbar did not take kindly to this, and a flashpoint was reached on 20 April when the two British officers who were accompanying Mulraj's replacement were killed by resentful Sikh soldiers. The killing coincided with, or triggered off, a major rebellion in Multan.

The new resident at Lahore, Sir Frederick Currie, who had taken over from John Lawrence on 6 March 1848, held the Lahore Durbar responsible for the mutiny, whereas the Sikh view was that it had been precipitated by the Company's clumsy handling of the situation in its early stages. But the British would not take the blame for it. Currie continued to hold the Durbar responsible for events at Multan and, furthermore, demanded that its Sikh troops put it down. The result of this mindless order was that the rebellion began to spread, with more and more Sikh soldiers rallying around Mulraj, to be joined even by those who had been earlier disbanded from the Sikh army.

From the time the two British officers were killed, the situation at Multan deteriorated to the point where many felt it to be a prime cause of the Second Sikh War. By June 1848 the Sikhs were forced to retreat inside the fort. On 4 September a trainful
of British troops from the Sutlej arrived, and an attack on the city was launched five days later. On 14 September events took a dramatic turn when Raja Sher Singh Attariwala, a Sikh chieftain who was also a good friend of the British, was sent to Multan with a contingent of Durbar troops to help quell the rebellion there. But within days of his arrival things got out of hand. Rebellious Sikh troops not only swung the Darbar troops to their side but brought out the simmering anger in Sher Singh which had been ignited by aspersions cast on his father Sardar Chattar Singh Attariwala, governor of Hazara, a man highly regarded both by the Sikhs and the British resident. An excitable political assistant, Captain James Abbott – described as a ‘suspicious little autocrat' – had not only spread unworthy reports about Chattar Singh but also mounted an expedition against him. Governor-General Dalhousie, even more excitable and erratic than Abbott, supported him. It was in this inflammable environment of anger and outrage that Chattar Singh's son Sher Singh was sent to Multan.

In a manifesto issued by Sher Singh under his seal, he declared: ‘In the first place, they [the English] have broken the treaty, by imprisoning, and sending away to Hindostan, the Maharanee [Rani Jind Kaur], the mother of her people. Secondly, the race of Sikhs, the children of the Maharajah [Ranjit Singh], have suffered so much from their tyranny, that our very religion has been taken away from us. Thirdly, the kingdom has lost its former repute. By the direction of the holy Gooroo, Raja Sher Singh and others, with their valiant troops, have joined the trusty and faithful Dewan Moolraj, on the part of Maharajah Duleep Sing, with a view to eradicate and expel the tyrannous and crafty Feringees.'
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