The Fall of the Kingdom of Punjab

by Khushwant Singh

  Punjabi troops recaptured Ali Masjid beyond the Khyber but were unable to hold it as winter came on. But as soon as the passes were cleared of snow in the spring of 1842, they again took the offensive and helped the British contingent coming from a different direction to recapture Ali Masjid. The Governor-General, Lord Ellenborough, in an official notification of 19th April expressed his entire satisfaction with the conduct of the troops of Maharajah Sher Singh. He informed his army ‘that the loss sustained by the Sikhs in the assault of the Pass which was forced by them is understood to have been equal to that sustained by the troops of Her Majesty to the Government of India’. Ellenborugh instructed his Agent at Lahore to offer his congratulations on this occasion, so honourable to the Sikh Army.

  The Durbar arranged for the supply of grain, cattle and other provisions to British troops and forwarded its own contingent, which was larger than the British, beyond the Khyber. By June the situation in Afghanistan had changed largely because of the relief of Jalalabad by the Punjabis. Sher Singh remained a zealous supporter of the British alliance despite the fact that the British harboured his arch enemies, the Sandhawalias.

  By the summer of 1842, the rising in Afghanistan had been put down. The scheme of putting Shah Shuja on the throne had proved an expensive failure and was not taken up again. Fortunately for the British, Shah Shuja was killed on 5th April 1842 and they decided to scrap the Tripartite Treaty and make terms with Dost Mohammed. The Amir was released from detention and brought back to Kabul.

  The experience of the Afghan campaign soured even the Anglophile Sher Singh. He leant a willing ear to Dhyan Singh Dogra, who pointed out how the British had used the Punjab as a stepping-stone to reach Afghanistan, and having done so, unilaterally abrogated the Tripartite Treaty without consulting the Durbar. The British had also assembled the largest army ever got together by them in India—at Ferozepur only forty miles from Lahore—without explaining the object of the muster. Cunningham wrote: ‘Perhaps so many Europeans had never stood together under arms on Indian ground since Alexander and his Greeks made the Punjab a province of Macedon.’

  Consequently, when in the winter of 1842 Lord Ellenborough expressed a desire to meet Sher Singh and thank him personally for the part played by the Punjabis in the Afghan campaigns, Sher Singh, who had first agreed to the reception, lost nerve and excused himself on the flimsy ground of protocol. The Governor-General had to content himself with shaking hands with Sher Singh’s son, the eleven-year-old Pertap Singh, and Dhyan Singh Dogra. The meeting took place at Ferozepur in January 1843.

  It soon transpired that the army collected on the borders of the Punjab was not entirely for display. The defeat in Afghanistan had been a grievous loss of face and the British Government wanted to achieve something spectacular to recover their lost prestige. The choice was between conquering the Punjab or Sindh. Schemes for taking the Punjab had not been finalised and from their performance in Afghanistan, the British had realised that the Punjabis would be a tough nut to crack. So it was decided to take Sindh. Without waiting for an excuse, Sir Charles Napier occupied the province in March 1843. ‘The real cause of the chastisement of the Amirs’, says Kaye, ‘consisted in the chastisement which the British had received from the Afghans. It was deemed expedient at the stage of the great political journey to show that the British could beat someone, and so it was determined to beat the Amirs of Sindh.’

  The relationship between the Punjab Government and the British cooled visibly. The Durbar continued to keep up appearances but stopped playing second fiddle to the British. The Punjabis gave Dost Mohammed, who had crossed swords with them in innumerable battles, a great reception when he passed through Lahore on the way to Kabul. The Durbur also entered into a separate agreement with him, recognising him as Amir of Afghanistan.

  The British sensed that they had through their maladroitness lost faith with Sher Singh and were not likely to regain it as long as Dhyan Singh Dogra remained the Maharajah’s Chief Counsellor. Still persisting in their pretensions of friendship, Clerk put pressure on Sher Singh to allow the Sandhawalia Sardars, Ajit Singh and Attar Singh, who were known to be inimical towards Dhyan Singh Dogra, to return to the Punjab and have their estates and castles restored to them. Sher Singh who had also been irked by the increasing power of the Dogras agreed to the request.

  In November 1842, Ajit Singh Sandhawalia arrived at Lahore and was received with open arms by the simple-minded Sher Singh. Lehna Singh was released from prison and the Sandhawalias were reinstated in their possessions. As was perhaps anticipated, the Sandhawalias became the pro-British, anti-Dhyan Singh Dogra party in the Lahore Durbar.

  Although Sher Singh befriended Ajit Singh Sandhawalia and the two became boon companions, in matters of policy he continued to accept the guidance of the astute Dhyan Singh Dogra. The arrangement was not to the liking of the Sandhawalias, who were more keen on power than on friendship, nor to the British, who interpreted Dhyan Singh’s independent policy as anti-British.

  Whether the Sandhawalias acted on their own initiative or on the assurance of support from the British will never be known, for in the holocaust that followed, all possible evidence was washed out in blood. Once more we have an account of the incident from the pen of Dr. Honigberger, who claims to have been ‘by accident not farther than ten steps from the place where the horrid crime was committed’.

  The 15th September 1843, being the first of the month of Asuj by the Hindu calendar, it was arranged that Sher Singh would take the salute at a march past and inspect the troops of Ajit Singh Sandhawalia. The parade was to take place on the open ground near the garden retreat of Shah Bilawal. The night preceding was spent in festivity as Ishar Kaur, the most beautiful of Sher Singh’s Maharanis, had given birth to a son. Sher Singh took his elder son Pertap Singh with him and left the child in a neighbouring garden to be weighed against silver which was to be given away in charity. After the march past, the Sandhawalia came up to the platform where the Maharajah was seated to present a double-barrelled gun of English manufacture which he had bought in Calcutta. As the Maharajah extended his arms to receive the weapon, Ajit Singh pressed the trigger. ‘Eh ki dagha (what treachery is this)’ exclaimed the unfortunate Maharajah and collapsed where he sat. The Sandhawalia’s men fell upon the Maharajah’s small escort, while Ajit Singh hacked off the Maharajah’s head and mounted it on his spear.

  As soon as he heard the gunshot at Shah Bilawal, Lehna Singh Sandhawalia rushed into the neighbouring garden, seized Pertap Singh and ignoring the child’s plea for mercy, severed his head from its trunk. He also stuck his victim’s head on his spear and joined the nephew. The assassins rode to the city flaunting their gory trophies. They met Dhyan Singh Dogra on the way. He remonstrated with them for killing Pertap Singh. ‘What is done cannot be undone. Dalip Singh must now be Maharajah,’ replied Ajit Singh, and invited the Dogra to come with them to the fort to make the proclamation. Dhyan Singh had a very small escort and though he became uneasy at the behaviour of the Sandhawalias, he had no option but to accompany them. The party went through the first gate. Then Ajit Singh distracted the Dogra’s attention by pointing to some soldiers posted on the ramparts and shot him in the back. ‘You murdered my sister-in-law,’ he said, referring to the killing of Chand Kaur. The Dogra bodyguard of twenty-five men was hacked to pieces.

  Suchet Singh and Hira Singh, who were encamped a couple of miles outside the city, got the news of the murders of the Maharajah and his son. They also received a summons from the Sandhawalias asking them to repair post-haste to the fort. But they were wary and even distrusted the summons bearing the seal of Dhyan Singh. As soon as they got news of Dhyan Singh’s murder, they sought refuge with the Khalsa army.

  The Sandhawalias occupied the fort and the palace in the belief that they would now rule the Punjab. They had not reckoned with the people.

  The news of the dastardly crimes sent a chill of horror through the citizens of Lahore. In the cantonments, the army Panches me
t and resolved to take the city under their protection and to punish the malefactors. They chose as their leader, Hira Singh, the son of Dhyan Singh Dogra, who had appealed to them to help him avenge the murder of his father. He swore that he would go hungry till the Sandhawalias had been punished. Dhyan Singh’s widows refused to allow the cremation of their husband’s corpse until the heads of the Sandhawalias were placed at its feet. The Dogras harangued the soldiers and told them of the connection between the Sandhawalias and the British. They also offered an increase of another rupee in the monthly pay of the soldiers. The army responded to the appeal and surrounded the fort by evening. All through the night the big guns roared and made several breaches in the wall. Next morning the Nihangs stormed in and captured the citadel.

  Hira Singh and his uncle Suchet Singh wreaked terrible vengeance on the Sandhawalias. Ajit Singh was captured trying to escape; Lehna Singh was found hiding in a dungeon with his leg broken. Both the Sardars and six hundred of their troops were put to the sword. Amongst those killed were Bhai Gurmukh Singh and Misr Beli Ram whom Hira Singh Dogra suspected of having beeen inimical towards his father. But Attar Singh Sandhawalia received the news of the death of his kinsmen while he was on his way to Lahore. He also tried to rouse the Sikhs against the Dogras, but his appeal fell on deaf ears. The army, which was largely Sikh, refused to collaborate with a family of regicides. Attar Singh fled across the Sutlej. The British had gained another trump card in their game against the Punjabis.

  Dhyan Singh Dogra’s limbs, which had been dismembered and thrown in the gutter, were collected. They were put together on the funeral pyre. His widows and maid-servants took their places about the corpse. The chief Rani pinned her husband’s aigrette on the turban of Hira Singh and said, ‘When I meet your father, I will tell him that you acted as a brave and dutiful son.’ The heads of the Sandhawalias were placed at its feet and the dead and living consigned to the flames.

  Thus ended the career of Raja Dhyan Singh Dogra, the most controversial character in the history of the Lahore Durbar: by some, including Maharajah Ranjit Singh, considered to be the ablest and most trustworthy of all counsellors; by many others, the evil genius of the Punjab Durbar who was chiefly responsible for the downfall of their kingdom.

  Did the British have a hand in the holocaust of the 15th and 16th September 1843? There are a few awkward facts that a British historian would find hard to explain away. The persistence with which Mr. Clerk, the Ludhiana Agent, pleaded the cause of the Sandhawalias and ultimately persuaded Sher Singh to let them return to Lahore assumes a sinister aspect when we discover that one month before the murder and while the Maharajah was in the best of health, the Governor-General had written: ‘The affairs of the Punjab will receive their denouement from the death of Sher Singh.’

  The Punjabis believed that the finger on the trigger of the gun which killed Maharajah Sher Singh was that of the British and that they have to answer for the carnage that followed—the murders of the heir-apparent, the Chief Minister and the deaths of over a thousand Punjabi and Dogra soldiers. Even the Anglo-Indian Press of Calcutta admitted that although there was no proof of the East India Company being directly concerned in the murders, it did, in the words of the Journal, Friend of India, ‘smell a rat’.

  Chapter 5

  The Punjab under the Dogras

  Maharajah Ranjit Singh had many sons but not one of them did he like as much as the precocious and handsome Hira Singh, the son of his Chief Minister Raja Dhyan Singh Dogra. Hira Singh was brought up by the Maharajah like his own child and formally invested with the title, Farzand-i-Khas (‘Special and Well-Beloved Son’). Ranjit Singh made him a Raja, arranged his marriage, loaded him with rich presents, allowed him the privilege of a seat in Court (a privilege not enjoyed even by the Chief Minister) and the liberty to speak his mind and contradict him. Hira Singh addressed the Maharajah without any formal honorifics, as ‘Bapu’ (father). There was little doubt in anyone’s mind that if Ranjit Singh had the power to ignore custom and convention, he would have chosen the Dogra boy as his successor. That, however, could not be and Hira Singh had no illusions that the formal ruler of the Punjab had to be a member of the Royal family. But in the atmosphere prevailing at Lahore where the spirit of the late Maharajah still dominated the minds of the Counsellors inasmuch as they tried to make decisions on the principle ‘What would have Maharajah Ranjit Singh done under the circumstances?’—it was assumed that Dhyan Singh’s place as Chief Minister would be taken by his son Hira Singh.

  The matter which agitated the minds of the Durbar was which of his sons should sit on the throne of Ranjit Singh. The choice fell on the youngest, Dalip Singh, then only six years old. The Sandhawalias had already announced Dalip’s accession. Hira Singh also felt that at least during the years of the Prince’s minority he would be Chief Minister as well as the de facto Maharajah of the Punjab. It is not unlikely that Dalip Singh’s mother, the young and beautiful Jindan, who had considerable influence with Hira Singh’s uncle, the handsome Suchet Singh Dogra, was able to exert it decisively in favour of her son. Consequently when the corpses were cleared from the streets and peace restored in the city, Dalip Singh was proclaimed Maharajah with Hira Singh Dogra as his Chief Minister.

  Neither the blood-letting of the 15th and 16th September nor the proclamation of the new Maharajah lanced the Durbar of its malignant factionalism. There was a realignment of the courtiers behind the claimants to the throne and to the post of Chief Minister. Dalip Singh’s pretensions were questioned by his elder stepbrothers, Peshaura Singh and Kashmira Singh. Hira Singh Dogra’s chief ministership was questioned by his uncle, Suchet Singh, who was backed by Maharani Jindan (whose lover he was reputed to be), and by his eldest brother Gulab Singh. Since Suchet Singh had no son of his own, Gulab Singh talked him into adopting his (Gulab Singh’s) youngest son Ranbir Singh, popularly known as Mian Pheena. This gave Gulab Singh a vested interest in the fortunes of Suchet Singh. Another contender for the post of Chief Minister was Jindan’s brother Jawahar Singh, who by virtue of his relationship became a sort of guardian-adviser to the young Maharajah. And yet another character who came on to the Punjab stage as a sort of Chief Minister to the Chief Minister, was a Brahmin priest, Pandit Jalla, who had been companion-tutor to Hira Singh since the latter’s childhood. Jalla was an extremely haughty and ill-tempered man and soon came to be disliked by everyone.

  The actors on the Durbar stage were, however, soon reduced to mere puppets whose movements were controlled by the army Panches. The control was exercised somewhat erratically because the army had no determined policy of its own and apart from forwarding the interests of the men its only other concern was with British designs on the Punjab. The reactions of the men to those suspected of dealing with the British were extremely fierce. The members of the Royal family and the durbaris exploited this anglo-phobia of the armed forces in their internal struggles by simply accusing their rivals of being in the pay of the British or, when in trouble themselves, warning the Army of the danger of British invasion. Since the larger part of the defence service was made up of Sikhs, an element of religious fervour came to pervade army circles. A man who came to the fore was one Bhai Bir Singh, a retired soldier who had become an ascetic and set up his own Gurdwara in the village of Naurangabad on the Sutlej.

  In times of national crisis, Sikh soldiers and peasantry began to turn to Bhai Bir Singh for guidance. Attending on the Bhai was a volunteer army of 1,200 musketeers and 3,000 horsemen. Over 1,500 pilgrims were fed by his kitchen every day.

  The danger of British invasion was no fanciful chimera. There was evidence of military preparations in India and the Punjabis knew that the British only needed an excuse to go to war. British agents were active in the Punjab and had subverted the loyalties of the Durbar’s European officers and many of the Sardars. Their tone in dealing with the Punjabis was either patronising or dictatorial. After the murders of Sher Singh and Dhyan Singh, the news of British military preparations an
d troop movements created a war psychosis in the Punjab.

  The Durbar retaliated by spreading disaffection in the Hindusthani regiments of the Company posted on their frontier. Throughout the winter of 1843-44 there were mutinies of sepoys in Sindh and in the cantonments along the Sutlej. In Sindh, the chief cause was the reduction in pay following the annexation of that country and the consequent cancellation of foreign allowance. On the Sutlej, particularly at Ferozepur, they were the result of the disparity between the pay given by the Company (eight and a half rupees per month) and that offered by the Durbar which was twelve and a half rupees per month. Lord Ellenborough was very alarmed at the outbreaks and felt that these mutinies were more dangerous than the hostility of the Khalsa—particularly as he felt that an invasion of the Sutlej would involve an operation of great magnitude and protracted character. The mutinies at Ferozepur became the subject of an acrimonious dispute between the Governor-General and his Commander-in-Chief, as a consequence of which Sir Robert Dick was removed from command on the Sutlej frontier and Major-General Walter Gilbert appointed in his place.

  The young Hira Singh Dogra tackled the problems facing him with great energy. He dismissed European officers known to be intriguing with the British and sent spies to find out the military preparations being made across the Sutlej. It was reported that the English had brought more than 200 guns to Ferozepur and were stocking their magazines with powder and ammunition. A European regiment was said to be marching upstream to Rupar. Hira Singh ordered Durbar troops to garrison Kasur (facing Ferozepur) and the moat of Phillaur fort to be flooded with water. In open durbar he asked the British vakil to explain why his Government was fortifying Ferozepur and why it had given asylum to Attar Singh Sandhawalia who was known to have been connected with the murders of the previous Maharajah and the Chief Minister and was inimical to the regime of the day. The vakil protested the goodwill of the British and said he would convey the Durbar’s fears to his Government.