The Third Battle of Panipat had begun.
Brigadier-General Sykes describes the determination of the Marathas in his book:
At dawn on this day, with the ends of their turbans flowing loose and their faces anointed with saffron, to signify death or victory, the Maratha army drew up outside the camp. Their centre was composed of the household cavalry. On the left was Ibrahim Khan with his artillery and French-trained Sepoys, and on the right were the contingents of Holkar and Scindia.18
The valour of the Marathas came to naught. They were routed by the Afghans and their power was shattered forever. The irony was that it was not the victorious Sadozai King, Ahmad Shah Durrani, who benefitted from the defeat of the Marathas. The ultimate beneficiary of Durrani’s victory would be born almost two decades later, in the house of Sukerchak.
Again from Sykes’ book:
The third battle of Panipat was one of the decisive battles of the world. Had the Afghans been defeated and driven across the Indus, all India would have paid tribute to the Marathas. But their overthrow on this stricken field weakened their power for a generation, dealing a fatal blow to the prestige of the Peshwa. For Ahmad Shah, Panipat was a pyrrhic victory which brought no commensurate political gains, although it won him fame and prestige. His soldiers, laden with booty, insisted on returning to their homes. Accordingly, after extracting as much money as possible at Delhi, where he nominated Ali Gauhur, son of the murdered Alamgir, as Emperor, under the title of Shah Alam, Ahmad Shah marched back to the highlands of Afghanistan.19
In March 1761, Durrani began the journey home. Throughout their passage through Punjab, they would be attacked repeatedly by bands of twenty to thirty Sikh horsemen, who would swiftly attack, discharge their muskets and gallop off. At night they would attack the Afghan camp and make off with their booty. They managed to free over two thousand Hindu women who had been seized by the Afghans and returned them to their families.
After the departure of Durrani, the Sikhs continued to flex their muscles and for a brief time, they even became the masters of Lahore. The festival of Diwali was celebrated with great joy and jubilation in 1761.
The jubilation was to be rather short-lived. In 1762, Ahmad Shah Durrani launched his sixth invasion. He had been watching the growing power of the Sikhs with unease and decided that it was finally time to punish them for years of defiance.
J.D. Cunningham, in one of the first accounts of the Sikhs published in the West, describes the next encounter between the Afghans and the Sikhs:
Ahmad Shah Abdali reached Lahore towards the end of 1762, and the Sikhs retreated to the south of the Sutlej river, hoping to join other Sikhs who had designs on the city of Sirhind. While they were planning to attack Zain Khan, the governor, Ahmad Shah moved his forces rapidly and engaged the Sikhs before they could take on Zain Khan. Thousands of Sikhs perished in the massacre that followed. The event is remembered in Sikh history as the ‘Vadda Ghallughara’ or the ‘Great Massacre’. The Shah went on a rampage, destroying gurdwaras and temples in Amritsar, polluting the pool with slaughtered cows, and by encasing numerous pyramids with the heads of decapitated Sikhs, and by washing the walls of desecrated mosques with the blood of his slain enemies.20
It is estimated that roughly a third of all Sikhs were killed in the ‘Vadda Ghallughara’ or the Great Massacre of 1762. The casualties included thousands of women, children and the elderly, who were trying to escape the Afghans’ wrath. However, the Sikhs were far from defeated.
Cunningham continues to say:
The Sikhs were not cast down; they received daily accessions to their numbers; a vague feeling they were a people had arisen among them; all were bent on revenge, and their leaders were ambitious of dominion and of fame.21
In fact, the slaughter had the effect of uniting the Sikhs and strengthening their resolve to resist the Afghans.
Durrani spent the rest of the year in Punjab, made peace with the Marathas and captured the province of Kashmir with the help of the Raja of Jammu before returning to Afghanistan in December 1762, leaving various lieutenants behind to govern in his name.
As expected, the Sikh Sardars launched campaigns against Durrani’s governors as soon as his back was turned; Hari Singh Bhangi took Kasur; Jassa Singh Ahluwalia took the Jalandhar Doab; Sirhind was recaptured by the Sikhs and Charat Singh Shukerchakia defeated General Jahan Khan at Sialkot. The Sikhs had become the masters of Punjab, from the Indus to the Yamuna!
Durrani was not going to sit idly while the Sikhs divested him of his former territories. In October 1764, he crossed the Indus for the seventh time, with a force of thirty thousand, including a large contingent of Baluchi tribesmen excited by the prospect of jihad. An invaluable account of this expedition has been written by Qazi Nur Mohammad, who accompanied the Shah on this expedition, in a work titled Jangnama, which documents the entry of the Afghans into Amritsar on 1 December 1764.22
Most of the inhabitants of Amritsar had fled, but when the Afghan army approached the Golden Temple, the most prominent place of Sikh worship, in the nearby tower known as the Akal Bunga they encountered about thirty Sikhs. Heavily outnumbered, the Sikhs rushed out of the tower and attacked the Afghans fiercely, until every man among them was cut down, eliciting the admiration of the Qazi who witnessed the skirmish.
The Sikhs had melted away and Durrani destroyed the Sri Harmandir Sahib yet again and ravaged Punjab, unable to exact a lot from the impoverished residents. Ala Singh submitted to him and was confirmed as Raja, promising to pay tribute to Durrani, who decided to return home after being unable to engage the Sikhs in battle. As soon as he crossed the Sutlej, the Sikh Sardars pounced upon the Afghans, once again employing their much-feared guerilla tactics and harried him until he left Punjab.
Qazi Nur Muhammad was so impressed by the gallantry of the Sikhs that he devoted a section of Jangnama to record his impressions of them, in a chapter titled ‘The Bravery of the Dogs in a Religious War and in General’, providing a rare insight into how the Afghans viewed their Sikh adversaries:
Do not call the Sikhs dogs, because they are courageous like lions in the field of battle. How can a hero, who roars like a lion in the field of battle, be called a dog? If you wish to learn the art of war, come face to face with them in the field. The body of every one of them is like the piece of a rock, and, in physical grandeur, every one of them is more than fifty persons.
Qazi Nur Muhammad provides the earliest known account of the tactics of guerilla warfare that the Sikhs perfected against the Afghans:
When their armies take to flight, do not take it as an actual flight. It is a war tactic of theirs. Beware, beware of them for a second time. The object of this trick is that when the furious enemy runs after them, he is separated from his main army and from his reinforcements.
This was the celebrated Sikh tactic known as ‘Dhai Phatt’, which became a signature of eighteenth-century Sikh warriors.
The Qazi is also one of the earliest to make observations about the character of the Sikhs:
Leaving aside their mode of fighting, hear you another point in which they excel all of other fighting people. In no case would they slay a coward, nor would they put an obstacle in the way of a fugitive. They do not plunder the wealth and ornaments of a woman, be she a wealthy lady or a maid-servant.
After Durrani’s departure, the Sikh Sardars mounted many ambitious expeditions, retaking Lahore and once again plundering the suburbs of Delhi. They also tried to make inroads into Multan, but had to abandon their designs because trouble was brewing again in the northwest.
Durrani was on the move again, vowing to settle the Sikh question once and for all. He entered Lahore in 22 December 1766 and tried to make peace with the Sikh governor Lehna Singh, who rebuffed his attempts. Jahan Khan was sent to take Amritsar but suffered heavy losses at the hands of the Sikhs, until Durrani himself arrived with reinforcements and took the city. This time however, he chose not to destroy the Harmandir Sahib, possibly having learned
by then that it would serve only to rally the Sikhs. He made a few desultory attempts to engage the Sikhs, who refused to be drawn into open confrontation, and returned home in frustration.
The Sikh campaigns restarted as soon as he left, and by the end of 1767, the Sikh Sardars were the undisputed masters of Punjab yet again.
Durrani made a final attempt to re-take Punjab, launching his ninth invasion in 1769, which was quite inconsequential. Suffering from cancer in his final days, he passed away in October 1772.
Ahmad Shah Durrani left a remarkable legacy. He was truly the founder of Afghanistan, which through its history had been first a loose confederacy of petty fiefdoms ruled by tyrannical chiefs, and then a province of great empires. Under him, for the first time, Afghanistan became a viable independent entity with the leadership and governance to sustain it.
These lines are from one of the most famous poems written by Ahmad Shah Durrani, titled ‘Love of a Nation’, in his native Pashto:
Our love for you ‘tis in our blood
A sacrifice each youthful head
None but you, my heart’s repose
Without you naught, but grief and dread
These Afghan vales and hills I love
What do I care for the Mughal throne
Oh I could choose to take the world
But your deserts barren, are my own.
The Sadozais reached the peak of their power under the leadership of Ahmad Shah Durrani. It was not apparent at the time of his death, but their fortunes were about to decline precipitously.
A new chapter in the Game of Thrones was about to begin.
THE RISE OF THE SUKERCHAKIAS
Ahmad Shah Durrani was succeeded by his son, Taimur Shah, who was the governor of Herat at the time of his father’s death. His ascension was challenged by his older brother Suleiman Mirza, who was in control of Kandahar. Taimur Shah prevailed, but decided to shift his capital from Kandahar to Kabul. One of his first acts was to confirm as Wazir, Payanda Khan, the head of the powerful Barakzai tribe, whose father Haji Jamal Khan had been instrumental in Ahmad Shah’s being elected leader, and who had also served as Wazir.
Taimur was no military genius like his father. By 1786, he had practically lost the province of Sind and his reign was roiled by a series of conspiracies against him. His eastern territories continued to be in a state of flux. Meanwhile, in India, the Mughal emperor had been reduced to living in Allahabad as a puppet of the British, who were steadily advancing their control westwards. The eastern Afghan empire was roamed freely by bands of Sikhs, Jats, Rohillas and Marathas, who plundered the populace with impunity.
The Sikh Sardars became the clear masters of the lands between the Indus and the Yamuna, and the Misls started to grow in power and influence. The Bhangi Misl captured Lahore and Amritsar and the Ramgarhia Misl took control of the hill states like Kangra, Nurpur, Chamba and Mandi. The Nakai Misl took control of the westernmost territories of Punjab. The Sukerchakia Misl, less powerful, expanded around their centre at Gujranwala. Across the Sutlej, the Sikh Misls of Malwa, like the Phulkians, began to expand eastwards and became a source of terror to the people living between the Yamuna and the Ganga.*
The British traveller George Forster, who was a keen observer of the Sikhs and somewhat prophetically predicted their rise, provides a snapshot of the activities of the Sikh Sardars.23 Calling the Sikhs the ‘plainest dealers in the world’, Forster describes the scene when two Sikhs showed up to exact tribute from the fort of Sebah, remarking on the spectacle of just two warriors striking terror in the hearts of an entire garrison barricaded in a fort! And doing so with great authority, employing ‘that style of language, which one of our provincial magistrates would direct at a gypsy, or sturdy beggar.’
In 1782, the Sikh Sardars, ever bolder, made an expedition to Delhi. Sardar Baghel Singh established a camp in Delhi and built four gurdwaras, Sis Ganj Sahib, Bangla Sahib, Rakabganj Sahib and Bala Sahib.
Taimur Shah nominally ruled over Punjab, but he exercised no real control. In 1791, he successfully pre-empted an attempt on his life by the commander of the guard of his harem, but died in 1793, possibly as a result of being poisoned.
Taimur Shah left behind thirty-six children, of whom twenty-three were sons, many of them governors of various provinces. Fierce jockeying started among the sons for the right to succeed, until the issue was settled by Payanda Khan Barakzai, Taimur Shah’s Wazir. In the role of kingmaker, Payanda Khan espoused the claim of Zaman Mirza, the fifth son of Taimur Shah and the governor of Kabul. Zaman Mirza was the son of Taimur’s favourite queen, who belonged to the Yusufzai tribe. Several rival princes were arrested and the wily Barakzai chief convinced all the tribal leaders to confirm the succession of Zaman Mirza, the new Sadozai king, now known as Shah Zaman.
But even as this was happening, unbeknownst to the Sadozai king, other powers were beginning to emerge in Punjab.
Charat Singh was the founder of the Sukerchakia Misl. The son of Sardar Naudh Singh, he broke away from the Faizullapuria Misl, left his ancestral village of Sukerchak and established himself at Gujranwala, where his daring and leadership qualities brought him a large following of Sikhs. He personally led his men on constant marauding expeditions and fought in multiple skirmishes with Ahmad Shah Durrani during his nine invasions of Punjab, winning battles at Eminabad, Wazirabad and Sialkot. He and his men also saw action against Durrani at the Vadda Ghallughara. After the departure of Ahmad Shah, he captured various territories in the western extremities of Punjab. Most notably, he captured the Salt Range of Kheora and Miani, a large source of revenue, arousing the animosity of the sardars of the Bhangi Misl who considered these areas their own. Their antagonism came into the open when Charat Singh and the Bhangi sardars took up opposing sides in a succession fight in Jammu. The rival Sikh armies marched into Jammu in 1770. Charat Singh was fatally wounded when his own matchlock exploded.
The open conflicts between the various Misls were only to accelerate in the years that followed.
Charat Singh was succeeded by his son Maha Singh, who continued in the same vein as his father, constantly engaging in armed conflicts in a quest for wealth and territory. On 13 November 1780, when he returned from an attack on a town called Rasulnagar, he was informed that he had become a father. He decided on naming the boy Ranjit (which means victorious in battle) in honour of his victory that day. Like his father, Maha Singh got embroiled in the internecine conflicts of Jammu, largely motivated by the state’s riches. He sacked Jammu in an alliance with Jai Singh, the leader of the Kanhaya Misl, but had a falling out with him after he was refused a share of the riches looted from Jammu. Maha Singh fought the Kanhayas at Batala, killing Gurbaksh Singh, the only son of Jai Singh Kanhaya.
In a strange twist of fate, Sada Kaur, the widow of Gurbaksh Singh Kanhaya, a woman of great vision, decided to make peace with the Sukerchakias and betrothed her daughter Mehtab Kaur to Ranjit Singh, the son of the man who had slain her husband.
This chain of events had no seeming connection with the fortunes of the Sadozai dynasty in faraway Kabul, but this alliance between the Kanhayas and the Sukerchakias was eventually destined to rock the Sadozai throne.
Just around the time when Maha Singh passed away, leaving Ranjit Singh, a young lad of twelve at the head of the Sukerchakia Misl, Shah Zaman, the Sadozai king of Afghanistan was in the process of consolidating power with the help of his Barakzai Wazir, Payanda Khan.
Shah Zaman was more ambitious than his father and aspired to restore the Afghan Empire to the glory days it had enjoyed under his grandfather. Although he also had to deal with various rebellions in Khorasan and other parts of his empire, his fondest hope was to regain control over the Afghan territories east of the Indus, which were now effectively in the hands of the Sikhs.
Finally in 1795, Shah Zaman crossed the Indus to recapture the holy Muslim town of Hasan Abdal, which was by then in the hands of the Sukerchakias. A rebellion by his brother Mahmud caused him to return hastil
y to Kabul. He made attempts to recapture Punjab again in 1797 and 1798, each time managing to take Lahore with the help of Nizamuddin Khan, the Nawab of Kasur.
By early 1799, the young Ranjit Singh, who had by then married Mehtab Kaur, was actively engaged in expanding his power with the support and guidance of his mother-in-law, the matriarch of the Kanhaya Misl and a woman of great capability and vision.
Olaf Caroe, in The Pathans, draws upon Cunningham’s History of the Sikhs to describe an encounter between the Sadozai King and the young Sukerchakia chief, and suggests that Ranjit Singh helped Shah Zaman and as a reward, was anointed Maharaja of Punjab at Lahore.
Khushwant Singh, in his History of the Sikhs vigorously contests this version. His view is that while it was possible that Shah Zaman’s acquiescence conferred some legitimacy upon Ranjit Singh’s investiture, it is a well-documented fact that Ranjit Singh took Lahore the hard way, wresting control of the city from the Bhangi Sardars. Succinctly stated, Lahore had not been Shah Zaman’s to bequeath upon anyone for some time.
Meanwhile in Kabul, the intrigues between the sons of Taimur Shah escalated and set into motion a chain of events that would culminate in the fall of the Sadozais, paving the way for two new dynasties to rise: the Barakzais in Afghanistan and the Sukerchakias in Punjab.
In 1799, Shah Zaman learned of a conspiracy that was being hatched by several of his chiefs who had been sidelined. The ringleaders of the conspiracy, including Payanda Khan, head of the powerful Barakzai tribe, were executed. One of Payanda Khan’s sons, Fateh Khan escaped and joined forces with Shah Zaman’s rebellious half-brother, Mahmud. In the year 1800, Shah Zaman was attacked and defeated by Mahmud with Fateh Khan’s help and support. Shah Zaman was captured and sent to Kabul, and in the time-honoured Afghan tradition of rendering your enemy incapable of retaliation, was blinded by his half-brother and the Barakzais. After various other misadventures, the blind Shah Zaman limped into Punjab, crossed the Sutlej and sought refuge with the British.
The Camel Merchant of Philadelphia Page 4