The Fall of the Kingdom of Punjab

by Khushwant Singh

  Sikh soldiers appealed to the Sikh, Hindu to the Hindu, Mussulman to the Mussulman. In a few days, the Doabs between the Ravi and Chenab and the Chenab and Indus swarmed with Pathan and Baloch shamsherees (swordsmen). Mulraj found himself riding a tiger and knew that he could not now afford to dismount. Lt. Edwardes wrote to the Resident explaining Mulraj’s predicament: ‘I think Mulraj has been involved in rebellion against his will, and being a weak man, is now persuaded by his officers that there is no hope for him but in going all lengths; that the origin of the rebellion was the natural dislike of the Pathans, Baluchis and Multanies (men of high family, courage, and false pride) to be turned adrift, after a life spent in military service well rewarded; and that these men will fight desperately, and die hard . . .’

  The immediate reaction of Resident Currie was to order troops he could spare towards Multan. But as soon as he got information that both Vans Agnew and Anderson were dead, he decided to bide his time and let the conflagration spread from Multan to the rest of the State, so that he could implicate the Maharajah, the Council of Regency, the Khalsa army and have the excuse to abolish all three. The order to the troops was countermanded and the Durbar coolly informed that since the revolt was against its authority it was for the Durbar to put it down, completely ignoring the fact that the British troops in the Punjab were being paid by the Durbar and it was their job to keep the Durbar in power by ‘preserving the peace of the country’. The possibility of unrest had been foreseen by Hardinge, who had organised three mobile brigades held in readiness at Lahore, Jullundur and Ferozepur to be able to take the field at short notice; these brigades were never called out. Currie also made a not too veiled threat that if the rebellion were not put down, the Council of Regency would be superseded. In a letter to the Governor-General, he wrote: ‘The Chiefs returned yesterday morning, and having heard what I had to say regarding the necessity of their putting down the rebellion, and bringing the offenders to justice, by their own means as the only hope of saving their Government, they retired to consult and concert measures. After much discussion they declared themselves unable, without British aid, to coerce Diwan Mul Raj in Multan and bring the perpetrators of the outrage to justice. After what has happened, I feel that if the question were one merely affecting the maintenance of the Sikh Government and preserving the tranquillity of their province we should scarcely be justified in expending more British blood and British treasure in such service.’

  The Resident was merely carrying out the policy laid down by the new Governor-General, the young and imperious Lord Dalhousie, who had a few months earlier replaced Lord Hardinge.

  Hardinge had left, regretting that it had not been his fate ‘to plant the British standard on the banks of the Indus’. Dalhousie had now grabbed the Union Jack and openly stated that he believed in ‘grasping all rightful opportunities of acquiring territory or revenue as may from time to time present themselves’. Hardinge had assured his successor that ‘it should not be necessary to fire a gun in India for some years to come’. Nevertheless, Dalhousie had proceeded to mass 50,000 men on the Sutlej, cantoned 9,000 in Lahore and 9,000 at Ferozepur. Four months after his taking over as Governor-General, the fracas at Multan—it was little more than that—gave him the opportunity he was waiting for. The question of rectitude did not unduly tax His Lordship’s conscience.

  Some British officers had the courage to speak their minds against this form of duplicity. Herbert Edwardes wrote a note to Resident Currie protesting that: ‘Some of the hardest campaigns in Indian history were fought in the hot weather, and men do not sicken when their minds are on the stretch . . . There is an argument still stronger for our settling the affair ourselves. Our national faith as pledged in the treaty solemnly demands that we should do all in our power to preserve little Dalip’s throne. Now if we wished to appropriate the country, and upset that throne, we have only to concentrate a Sikh army on Multan; and disloyalty would follow union, national insurrection would follow disloyalty, and the seizure of the Punjab in self-defence follow insurrection, as inevitably as the links of a chain. The world would acquit us, being ignorant of what we know; but neither God, nor our conscience could do so.’

  The Durbar was on the horns of a dilemma, knowing full well that no matter what it did the result would be the same: the annexation of the Punjab. The only difference would be that if it did put down the Multan rising, the British would not have the excuse of subverting the dynasty of Ranjit Singh, and would probably only reduce Dalip Singh to the status of one of the Rajas of Hindustan. On the other hand, if it lent its support to the uprising this would lead to an all-out war against the British and a chance, however small, of winning and becoming free. Faced with these alternatives, the ministers did what anyone in their shoes would have done: to bide their time and see how the situation developed.

  Maharajah Dalip Singh was still too young to be able to make up his own mind. His mother, the only one he could turn to for advice, had been removed from the scene. Her place had been taken by his prospective father-in-law, Chattar Singh of Attari, and his (Chattar Singh’s) son Sher Singh. The old Sardar was Governor of the N.W.F. Districts. British officers were posted in close proximity to keep a watch on him; Major George Lawrence at Peshawar and his deputy, Captain James Abbott, at Hazara. Sher Singh assumed pre-eminence in Durbar circles by virtue of the fact that his sister was engaged to marry Dalip Singh. The Attariwala family were particularly cautious in their dealings with the British because they did not want to jeopardise the prospects of Dalip Singh becoming the sovereign (or even demisovereign) of the Punjab. They were determined to support the Resident in all measures he wished to take during the minority of the Maharajah.

  The Resident instructed Sher Singh Attariwala and two other Durbar officers, Imamuddin and Jawahar Mal, to accompany General Whish on the expedition against Mulraj. The plan was to make a three-pronged attack on Multan: the Durbaris from the north, the Bahawalpuri Daudputras from the east, and the combined forces of General Van Cortlandt and Lt. Edwardes from the west or the south.

  Up till then there was complete harmony between the Durbar and the Resident.

  Suddenly the tone of Captain Abbott in his dealings with Chattar Singh Attariwala changed from polite to uppish and from uppish to insulting. It is hard to tell whether Abbott by nature was ill-bred and ill-tempered or was acting under instructions. He did however succeed in driving the old decrepit Sikh to desperation.

  Let us return to Multan.

  The populace had forced Mulraj to become their leader but he had barely 2,000 regular soldiers, five or six guns and a very limited quantity of gunpowder and ammunition with him. The rest of the Dewan’s army was a mob armed with swords, spears and sharp-edged agricultural instruments. Coming against him from Lahore were European and Hindustani troops under General Whish and the Durbar’s Punjabi battalions under Sher Singh Attariwala. On the north-western side he was threatened by Lt. Edwardes at Dera Fateh Khan with 2,000 men and four guns and Van Cortlandt with another 2,000 men a little higher up the Indus at Dera Ismail Khan. On his eastern side was the Nawab of Bahawalpur with his army. It was a desperate situation and Mulraj had no qualities of leadership. He was a frightened man, suspicious of the people who wanted to help him. Although he knew that the die had been cast he continued to protest his innocence with the Resident and asked for a fair trial. His family had accumulated a vast treasure, but he was reluctant to part with it.

  The first move had been made by Lt. Edwardes. As soon as he had received the letter from Vans Agnew on 22nd April, he had crossed the Indus and occupied Leiah, but discreetly withdrew when he got information of a Multani force coming against him, and instead captured the small town of Mangrota from Mulraj’s deputy, Chetan Mal. He exhorted the Muslim tribes of the neighbourhood to rise against the Sikhs. The prospect of loot induced many of the tribesmen to come in on the side of the British. Edwardes, Van Cortlandt and the tribal levies pushed southwards and on 20th May occupied Dera Ghazi Kha
n. Chetan Mal, who had retreated to Dera Ghazi Khan, was killed in a skirmish. Edwardes pressed on, by-passing the fort of Harrand, which was held jointly by Sikhs and Pathans, crossed the Indus and approached Multan from the south. From the other side troops from Bahawalpur (8,500 men, 11 guns and 302 zambooras), commanded by Lt. Lake, crossed the Ravi to join Edwardes. Mulraj abandoned the post of Khangarh on the Chenab and proceeded from Shujabad to Kineri, where he clashed with the Bahawalpuris under Lake on 18th June 1848. Despite the Bahawalpuris’ superiority in men and guns, Mulraj held them at bay for seven hours till Van Cortlandt, who had occupied Khangarh, joined the Bahawalpuris. Mulraj fell back on Shujabad and from Shujabad on Sikandarabad and then on Surajkund, very close to Multan. The joint forces of Edwardes, Lake and Van Cortlandt, consisting of local tribesmen, Bahawalpuris and Durbar troops, inflicted yet another defeat on the Multanis on 1st July 1848 at Saddosam. The Multanis fell back on their citadel.

  Meanwhile on the cool heights of Simla, Lord Gough was calmly planning a regulation campaign for the winter. ‘As if the rebellion,’ so runs an indignant letter from Edwardes, ‘could be put off like a champagne tiffin with a three-cornered note to Mulraj, to name a date more agreeable.’

  Mulraj’s efforts to win over the Sikh soldiers to his side had not met with much success, because till then the Sikhs believed that Mulraj had rebelled against Maharajah Dalip Singh and the Durbar. But just about this time, Bhai Maharaj Singh arrived on the scene. He had toured the Majha country some time in May, exhorting the people to volunteer for the Dharma yuddha—the battle for righteousness. He told them of the prophecy contained in the Sau Sakhi (The Hundred Fables), a spurious piece of writing ascribed by charlatans to Guru Gobind Singh, wherein it was stated that in the year ensuing the British Government would come to an end and a man of the name of Dalip Singh would restore the sovereignty of the State and re-establish the Khalsa Panth. Thousands of Sikhs joined the crusade and made for Multan. The Resident ordered troops to pursue Maharaj Singh’s private army. Durbar troops overtook Maharaj Singh near the Chenab. The Bhai was able to get away, but a large number of his followers were either captured or drowned in the river.

  Bhai Maharaj Singh’s arrival in Multan decided the rank and file of the Sikhs to throw in their lot with Mulraj. This is exactly what the British desired. They could now fan the spark of revolt and make it into a national conflagration, then drown it in blood and annex the state. The only obstacles were the Chiefs led by the Attariwala Sardars who remained doggedly loyal to the Resident. In June 1848, Sher Singh Attariwala was with the British officers investing Multan, while his father was policing the North-West Frontier. The Attariwala’s adherence to the British exasperated the people. One Sujan Singh, who was the leader of a conspiracy to poison Sher Singh, was apprehended and blown off from a gun. ‘Sujan Singh,’ wrote Edwardes, ‘was a Sikh Jagirdar horseman of some consideration and still greater notoriety.’ This execution was extremely ‘unpopular’ and Sher Singh himself expected resistance.

  The interests of the chiefs lay in the maintenance of the Resident’s rule; the interests of the soldiers were against its continuance. The soldiers’ Panchayats had been disbanded and their salaries reduced to the scale they had drawn in the time of Ranjit Singh. The Chiefs had had their privileges restored by the British and had much to lose; the soldiers had lost much; they had much to gain if the rebellion succeeded and little to lose if it failed. At the end of June, the Resident wrote that ‘the Sirdars are true, I believe; the soldiers are false, I know.’ Edwardes echoed the same opinion in the middle of July. ‘With respect to the Sirdars, I believe them to be heart and soul on our side, which is the side of jagirs, titles, employments, and whole throats. But their force, with equal confidence, I report to be against us to a man.’

  Anti-British sentiments gathered force as the siege of Multan dragged on. Chattar Singh Attariwala, who had earned a lot of unpopularity with the masses for his condemnation of the Multan rebellion (he had salutes fired in honour of Edwardes’ victories over Mulraj), suddenly found himself let down by his English subordinate, Captain James Abbott. There were persistent remours that the British did not intend to honour their word about restoring the Punjab to Dalip Singh when he came of age. The old Sardar wrote to his son to get Lt. Edwardes to write to the Resident and fix a date for the marriage of Maharajah Dalip Singh to his (Chattar Singh Attariwala’s) daughter. Edwardes approached the Resident, who promised to consult the Durbar. He ended his reply on an ominous note. ‘I do not see how proceeding with the ceremonies of the Maharajah’s nuptials can be considered as indicative of any line of policy which the Government may consider it right to pursue now or at any future time in respect to the administration of the Punjab.’

  Captain James Abbot continued to behave aggressively towards Chattar Singh Attariwala. Early in August, without any warning, he left the Sardar’s camp and without any provocation whatsoever began to rouse the Frontier tribesmen against the Sikhs. In his own words, he ‘called upon them in the memory of their murdered parents, friends and relatives to rise and aid me in destroying the Sikh forces in detail.’ On 6th August, Chattar Singh Attariwala found himself besieged by tribal levies raised by Abbott. For his own safety he decided to move into the fort of Haripur and ordered the American, Colonel Canora, who was a servant of the Durbar, to make room for him. The American refused to obey unless he also received orders from Capt. Abbott. Chattar Singh warned him of the perilous situation they were in but the Colonel paid no attention; instead, he greeted the platoon sent to take over the fort standing between two loaded cannon with the port-fire lighted in his hand. He slew a Havildar who refused to fire on Chattar Singh’s soldiers and himself applied the pinestock to his cannon, but they did not go off. Chattar Singh’s men fell on Canora and killed him.

  The incident gave Captain Abbott the excuse he was waiting for. He charged Chattar Singh ‘with coldblooded murder’ and began to recruit tribesmen to fight Durbar troops. The Resident censured Abbott for his rash conduct. He wrote: ‘It is clear that whatever may have been the intention of the Brigade (under Chattar Singh), no overt act of rebellion was committed by them till initiative was taken by you by calling out the armed peasantry, and surrounding the Brigade in its cantonment. I have given you no authority to raise levies, and organise paid bands of soldiers to meet an emergency, of the occurence of which I have always been somewhat sceptical. It is much, I think, to be lamented . . . that you have judged of the purpose, and feelings and fidelity of the Nazim and the troops, from the report of spies and informers, very probably interested in misrepresenting the real state of affairs. None of the accounts that have yet been made justifies you in calling the death of Commedan Canora a murder, nor in asserting that it was premeditated by Sardar Chattar Singh.’

  Despite the reprimand to Abbott, Currie resolved to eliminate the Attariwala Sardars. Capt. Nicholson, who was sent to reconcile Chattar Singh and Abbott, ordered the sequestration of Chattar Singh’s estate and asked him to surrender. Nicholson wrote to Currie saying that he had offered Chattar Singh the following terms : ‘That if the Sardar immediately come unto me, and sent back the troops to their posts, I guarantee his life and izzat being spared: but I neither gurantee his Nazimship nor his jagir, which indeed, I have intimated to him, he cannot expect to be allowed to retain. All things considered,’ he added, ‘I trust you will agree with me that the loss of the Nizamat and of his jagir will be a sufficient punishment, and that I have acted rightly in offering these terms.’

  The Resident, who had a fortnight earlier admitted that Chattar Singh was innocent, ‘entirely approved, confirmed and ratified’ the action taken by Nicholson.

  Chattar Singh was an old, bespectacled and bleary-eyed man who walked with a stoop and was in bad health. He was looking forward to getting his daughter married to the Maharajah and then retiring to his village, Attari. He did not want, nor was he fit enough to lead a rebellion. But the treatment he received at the hands of Abbott and Nicho
lson forced him to draw the sword with his feeble hands. He wrote to his son, telling him of the way he had been slighted by upstart foreigners and exhorted him to join his countrymen in fighting them to a finish. Till then Sher Singh Attariwala had stuck doggedly to his British allies and ignored the pleas of his soldiers and Mulraj’s emissaries. On 9th September, he took part in an unsuccessful assault on Multan. Capt. Pearse recorded in his diary next day. ‘The Sikhs fought splendidly—what pricks they are!’ His father’s letter made Sher Singh extremely uneasy. There were even rumours afloat that Chattar Singh had been murdered by Fateh Khan Gheba, a hireling of the British. But Sher Singh took no notice of them. An incident on 13th September 1848 finally convinced him of the dishonesty of British intentions. That night he visited the British officers’ mess after dinner, as he had done every day, and took his seat next to Edwardes. He noticed Van Corlandt (still eating the Durbar’s salt) slip out of the tent. A little later, an officer of Sher Singh’s regiment came in and whispered in the Sardar’s ear that Corlandt had ordered the mess tent to be surrounded by Pathan mercenaries. Sher Singh took a hurried leave and got away before Van Cortlandt’s men could apprehend him. Next morning Sher Singh Attariwala and his troops left the British Camp.

  Sher Singh issued a proclamation asking all Punjabis to rise against the foreign oppressors. It said: ‘It is well known to all the inhabitants of the Punjab, to all the Sikhs, and those who have cherished the Khalsa, and in fact, the world at large, with what oppression, tyranny and violence the feringhis have treated the widow of the great Maharajah Ranjit Singh and what cruelty they have shown towards the people of the country.’

  For three weeks Sher Singh Attariwala tried to convince Mulraj that he had broken with the feringhi but the Dewan refused to believe him. His suspicions had been further roused by a forged letter which Edwardes contrived to let fall into Mulraj’s hands. In this letter Edwardes pretended to be privy to a plot by which Sher Singh was to take the fort by stratagem. The gates of Multan fort remained firmly shut against Attariwala. Sher Singh lost patience with Mulraj and on 9th October struck camp to go north to join his father.