The Fall of the Kingdom of Punjab

by Khushwant Singh

  ‘It is due to the Sikhs to say that they fought bravely,’ wrote General Sir Joseph Thackwell, who was present at the battle, ‘for though defeated and broken they never ran, but fought with their talwars to the last and I witnessed several acts of great bravery in some of their Sirdars and men.’

  With Sham Singh Attariwala fell the bravest of the Sikh Generals, Gulab Singh Gupta, Hira Singh Topee, Kishan Singh (son of Jemadar Khushal Singh) and their Muslim colleagues, Mubarak Ali and Shah Nawaz, son of Fateh Din of Kasur. Most of the others leapt into the swirling waters and were drowned. It is estimated that nearly 10,000 Punjabis were killed in the action at Sabraon. All their guns were either captured or lost in the river. It was a complete and crushing defeat.

  Lord Hardinge who saw the action wrote: ‘Few escaped; no one, it may be said, surrendered. The Sikhs met their fate with the resignation which distinguished their race.’

  Lord Gough described Sabraon as the Waterloo of India. He paid tribute to the Punjabis: ‘Policy precluded me from publicly recording my sentiments on the splendid gallantry of our fallen foe or to record acts of heroism displayed not only individually but almost collectively, by the Sikh Sardars and the army; and I declare were it not from a deep conviction that my country’s good required the sacrifice I would have wept to have witnessed the fearful slaughter of so devoted a body of men.’

  The bard Shah Mohammad immortalised the heroic stand of Sham Singh’s men at Sabraon. ‘They squeezed the blood out of the whites as one squeezes juice out of a lemon,’ he wrote. ‘If only Ranjit Singh were there he would have been proud to see how his Khalsa wielded their swords.’

  Shah Mohammad explained the result of the campaign in the following words:

  O Shah Mohammad, without Ranjit such was our plight

  We won the battles but lost the fight.

  The traitors too were immortalised in doggerel verse punning on their names:

  Laloo di lalee gaee, Tejoo da gea tej

  Ran vich pith dikhai key modha aie pher.

  Laloo lost the blush of shame

  Tejoo lost his lustre

  By turning their backs in the field

  They turned the tide and battle yield.

  Chapter 8

  The British Enter the Punjab

  Remnants of the Punjabi army, defeated on the southern banks of the Sutlej, reassembled at the village of Raiban, east of Lahore, to lick their wounds. They had neither guns nor ammunition nor any fight left in them. The rest of the Durbar’s forces were scattered in distant parts of the State.

  The British did not give the Punjabis time to re-muster and two days after their victory at Sabraon, they crossed over the pontoon bridge at Ferozepur and occupied the fort of Kasur. Gulab Singh Dogra went out from Lahore to receive them; he was acceptable to the British because not only had he kept aloof from the Sutlej campaign, but had also prevented the Dogras from fighting alongside the Punjabis. On 3rd February 1846, he had been assured by Major Lawrence that his interests would be considered in any settlement imposed by the British on the Durbar. He had also been informed by Lord Hardinge that the British did not intend subverting the dynasty of Ranjit Singh. The best that the Dogra could hope for under the circumstances was to win British support to his claim to be Chief Minister of the Punjab in place of the now defeated and discredited Lal Singh. He was shrewd enough to go first to the Army Panches and get their assurance that any agreement he made with the British would not be repudiated by them. Armed with this guarantee, he took Fakir Nuruddin (Fakir Azizuddin having died a month earlier) and Dewan Dina Nath with him, and tendered the submission of the Durbar to the British.

  Lord Hardinge wanted to annex the Punjab outright; but he realised that this could not be done in the spring of 1846. Although the Punjabis had been defeated on the Sutlej, they still had considerable forces in other parts of the State. Besides 25,000 men at Raiban, there were 8,000 more at Peshawar and an equal number in the south near Multan. Hardinge’s own force was 20,000 men of which only a small proportion were Europeans; and the Hindustani sepoys had shown up very poorly against the Punjabis. An all-out campaign would require more reinforcements which, in turn, would put a severer strain on the exhausted treasury. In any case the campaigning season was almost over and the English soldiers were most reluctant to fight in the intense heat of summer. For these reasons, Lord Hardinge decided to annex the Punjab in two stages, taking half each time. In the first stage he would take the Jullundur Doab, separate the hills (Kashmir and Hazara) from the plains and weaken the State by limiting the size of the Punjabi army, to facilitate the final take-over. In an official minute he wrote: ‘A diminution of the strength of such a warlike nation on our weakest frontier seems to me to be imperatively required. I have, therefore, determined to take a strong and fertile district between the Sutlej and the Beas. This will cover Ludhiana and bring us within a few miles of Amritsar, with our back to the Hills. In a military sense, it will be very important— it will weaken the Sikhs and punish them in the eyes of Asia. I shall demand one million and a half in money as compensation: and if I can arrange to make Gulab Singh and the Hill tribes independent, including Kashmir, I shall have weakened this warlike republic. Its army must be disbanded and reorganised. The numbers of the artillery must be limited. The Maharajah must himself present the keys of Gobindgarh and Lahore, where the terms must be dictated and signed.’

  Lord Hardinge wanted the ruling clique to remain Sikh so that it could keep a balance of power with the Muslims, who formed the majority of the population. The British were at the time highly distrustful of Muslims. These were the terms which Hardinge instructed his Agent, Major Henry Lawrence, to impose on the Durbar.

  On 15th February, Gulab Singh Dogra, Fakir Nuruddin and Dina Nath, along with Sultan Mohammed Barakzai and other Sardars, waited on Lord Gough at Kasur. The Commander-in-Chief refused to accept nazars from them as they represented a nation still hostile to the British. He soundly warned them of the fate that awaited them. ‘Retributive justice required that the proceedings of the British Government should be of a character which would mark to the whole world that insult could not be offered to the British Government, and our provinces invaded by a hostile army, without signal punishment.’ Gough had also received instructions to show special favour to Gulab Singh. He praised the Dogra in front of the Sardars for ‘the wisdom, prudence and good feeling evinced by him in having kept himself separate from these unjustifiable hostilities of the Sikhs’.

  The representatives of the Lahore Durbar spent the whole night discussing the terms of the treaty with Frederick Currie, Chief Secretary of the British Government, and Major Henry Lawrence, and in the end conceded all that the victorious British required of them. They agreed to relinquish ‘in full sovereignty of the territory, hill and plain, lying between the Sutlej and the Beas’ (the Jullundur Doab at the time yielded a revenue of £4,00,000); to pay Rs 1 V crore as war indemnity (which the British knew the Durbar could not pay); and to surrender all guns that had faced the British, pay off the army and limit its strength to the number at the time of Ranjit Singh.

  Three days later, Maharajah Dalip Singh was escorted by Gulab Singh Dogra and Bhaia Ram Singh to the British camp to make his submission to the Commander-in-Chief and the Governor-General at the village of Lulliani. The Dogra acted as Master of Ceremonies for the Durbar. ‘Gulab Singh’s oriental form of expression was rather fine,’ wrote General Sir Hope Grant, who was present at the meeting. ‘If,’ said Gulab Singh, ‘my son or dearest friend were taken ill, I should immediately send for the most eminent physician, and throw the sufferer into his hands, request his advice, and make the patient swallow the physic prescribed. I now place the Maharajah in the hands of the Governor-General as that skilful physician. I know everything he will do with regard to him will be for the best, and for his advantage.’

  Lord Hardinge replied with a speech praising Ranjit Singh and expressed the hope that the relations between the two States would return to frien
dly normality. Presents were exchanged and British guns fired a salute to the Maharajah.

  The Governor-General resumed his march to Lahore, with the vanquished Maharajah in his train. British troops were cantoned at Mian Mir just outside the capital. The Maharajah’s guardians were nervous of the reaction of the populace and asked for a British force to guard the fort. The request was granted and British troops were posted round the palace and at the Hazuri Bagh entrance to the fort.

  On 8th March 1846, the Treaty of Lahore, embodying the clauses of the partial annexation of the Punjab, was signed. General Sir Hope Grant gives a vivid description of the scene: ‘The hall of the durbar was inlaid throughout with looking-glass; lustres and chandeliers were suspended from the ceilings; in front of the hall was an open court with lofty arches, beneath which a fountain was playing, and in the adjacent wide extent of water lovely water-birds were disporting themselves—amongst them a beautiful scarlet flamingo luxuriated in the spray. Hanging silk drapery and shawls screened off the sun, and beautiful rich-coloured carpets were spread over the floor. Inside the hall were the young Maharajah, Dhuleep Singh, a pretty boy, and the Sikh chiefs, Raja Lal Singh, a fine jovial-looking fellow; Raja Tej Singh, one of the Generals, with a most disagreeable countenance, strongly marked with small-pox, and presenting a disgusting drunken aspect; Raja Runjodh Singh, who commanded at Aliwal, a handsome but an effeminate-looking fellow, and innumerable other chiefs. According to the custom of the country, handsome presents were offered, and amongst them the priceless and magnificent Koh-i-noor diamond, which was handed about from person to person as though it were of little value. It was set as an armlet, and was merely fastened to the wearer with a bit of red silk. It was upwards of an inch in length, three-quarters of an inch in breadth, and thick, in proportion. Two smaller stones, each of immense value, were attached to either side of the jewel.’

  The signatories for the Durbar were Lal Singh, Tej Singh, Bhaia Ram Singh and Dewan Dina Nath. Two clauses of the agreement drawn up at Kasur were amended. Since the Durbar was unable to pay more than 50 lakhs of the total war indemnity of Rs. 1½ crores, Hazara and Kashmir were taken away from the Punjab (as Hardinge had planned) and Kashmir sold to Gulab Singh Dogra for a million pound sterling.

  The Dogras found it impossible to take Hazara from the Pathan tribes who had availed of the Punjabi preoccupation in the Sutlej campaign to free themselves and had captured all the forts in the region. The British came to their rescue by taking over Hazara and compensating Gulab Singh by giving him additional territory adjoining Jammu. After settling the frontier between Kashmir and the Punjab, Captain Abbott was put in charge of Hazara.

  The figure of a million pound sterling was subsequently reduced by one-fourth. Suchet Singh’s treasure estimated to be worth fifteen to twenty lakhs of rupees, which was with the British, was also given over to Gulab Singh.

  The Durbar army was reduced to 20,000 infantry and 12,000 cavalry.

  At the request of Lal Singh and other Sardars, a British force was kept for the protection of the Maharajah till the end of the year at a payment of £22,000. A Council of Regency was set up to administer the State on behalf of the Maharajah till he came of age. Rani Jindan became Regent with Lal Singh as her Chief Adviser. Major Henry Lawrence was posted at Lahore as Agent of the Governor-General.

  On 16th March 1846, another ceremony took place in Amritsar. This was to ratify the treaty with Gulab Singh and formally give him the title to Jammu and Kashmir. The Dogra, who had only hoped to be Chief Minister of a truncated Punjab, became instead the Maharajah of a state about the size of Italy. Thus the ricch (bear), as he was known amongst the people, got the best honey out of the Durbar’s honeycomb. He accepted the gift with due humility, describing himself unwittingly as Zar Kharid—a slave bought by gold.

  Chapter 9

  The Punjab as a British Protectorate

  One month after the British had installed themselves as protectors of the Punjab there took place an incident which has come to be known in history as the ‘cow row’. It indicates the state of mind of the ‘protectors’ and their attitude towards the natives.

  An English sentry, irritated by an obstruction caused by a herd of cows, slashed some of them with his sword, and thus outraged the religious susceptibilities of the Hindu and Sikh citizens. The British Agent and officers who went into the city to explain the misconduct of the sentry were pelted with stones. They demanded the severest punishment for the insult. The next day Maharajah Dalip Singh was taken by Lal Singh to make his apologies to the Agent. Many houses in the bazar where the incident had taken place were razed to the ground and of the three men chiefly concerned in the stoning one was hanged and two deported. The English soldier who had caused the riot was ‘warned to be more careful in the future’.

  Not all Punjabis accepted the terms of the Treaty of Lahore and at least two expressed defiance in no uncertain terms. The commander of the fort of Kangra refused to obey the order of the Durbar to hand over the citadel to the British; he replied haughtily that he would not open the gates ‘until Maharajah Ranjit Singh ordered him to do so’ and obey no purwana save that of the powder and ball (goley barood da purwana). In May, Henry Lawrence proceeded to Kangra with a combined British and Punjabi force to compel the fort to surrender—which it did on 28th May 1846.

  A somewhat different situation obtained in Kashmir. The Governor, Shaikh Imamuddin, was informed of the treaty by which the State had been sold to Gulab Singh. He had hoped to keep it for himself. Later he received a secret message from Lal Singh, who had been chagrined by Gulab Singh’s success with the English, that if he kept out the Dogras, Kashmir would be given to him, One of the messages read:

  ‘My friend, you are not ignorant of the ingratitude and want of faith which Raja Gulab Singh has exhibited towards the Lahore Sarkar. It is indeed sufficiently glaring. I now write, therefore, to request you, my friend, that you will now set before your eyes the example of your late father’s former relations with the aforesaid Raja, and consider both your duty and your interest to lie this way, and inflict such injury and chastisement upon the said Raja that he shall have reason to remember it. It is to be hoped he will never be able to re-establish himself again. For your security and confidence, my friend, I have sent you a separate written guarantee, that you may have no misgivings as to the consequences. Let me hear often of your welfare.

  ‘P.S. Tear up this paper when you have read it.’ Imamuddin had no difficulty in expelling the Dogras who came to take possession of Kashmir.

  Gulab Singh appealed to the British Agent, who, in his turn, required the Durbar to fulfil its obligations under the Treaty.

  In October 1846, Henry Lawrence took 17,000 Durbar troops along with Gulab Singh and his Dogras and proceeded to Kashmir. Shaikh Imamuddin submitted without firing a shot. In addition to handing over Kashmir, he handed over three secret missives he had received from Lal Singh exhorting him to resist Gulab Singh.

  Lal Singh was tried by a British court, found guilty of duplicity and sentenced to be exiled from the Punjab. Apart perhaps from Rani Jindan, no one wasted any tears over the traitor. Even Dewan Dina Nath, who defended him in Court, agreed that having been proved guilty he should be externed. Lal Singh lived in peaceful obscurity in Dehra Dun and Mussoorie till his death in 1867.

  The Council of Regency was reorganised with four members: Tej Singh, Dina Nath, Fakir Nuruddin and Sher Singh Attariwala.

  While Lal Singh’s trial was going on, Lehna Singh Majithia, who had returned from his rather lengthy ‘pilgrimage’ to Hindu holy places in India, called a meeting of some fifty leading Sardars of the State. They deliberated for some months to draw up a code of simple laws for the guidance of the Sikhs. But as the people began to get restive against their ‘protectors’ and in many places in the annexed Jullundur Doab there was rebellion against the administration of John Lawrence, the Majithia Sardar again quit the Punjab to resume his itinerary of homage to the Hindu gods.

 
In December 1846, Lord Hardinge again visited Lahore to review the working of the Treaty and to revise it in such a way as would facilitate the complete annexation of the Punjab.

  Under the terms of the Treaty, the British force for the protection of the Maharajah had to be withdrawn by the end of the year. Hardinge did not want to withdraw this force; but he wanted to get the Durbar to ask for its retention. The Durbar was somewhat reluctant to make the request. In a letter dated 10 December 1846, Hardinge wrote to Currie: ‘The coyness of the Durbar is natural; but it is very important the proposal should originate with them; and in any documents proceeding from them this admission must be stated in clear and unqualified terms; our reluctance to undertake a heavy responsibility must be set forth.’

  In another letter, Lord Hardinge instructed Currie to ‘persevere in your line of making the Sikh Durbar propose the condition or rather their readiness to assent to any conditions imposed as the price of the continuance of our support’.

  ‘In the preamble of the Supplementary Articles’, the Governor-General added, ‘this solicitation must clearly be their act.’

  Rani Jindan, who had been most anxious to have British troops in the capital, had had second thoughts after the fall of Lal Singh; she was eager to assert her own rights as the Queen Mother and get the foreigners out of the Kingdom. Hardinge decided to get rid of Jindan and make the British Resident de facto ruler of the Punjab. On 10th December 1846, he wrote to Frederick Currie: ‘You are the person best qualified to ensure the success of a British administration under novel and difficult circumstances in the Punjab and in such case I should place you on the same footing as the Lieutenant-Governor . . . I have a very high opinion of Lawrence and next to yourself I prefer him.’