The Fall of the Kingdom of Punjab

by Khushwant Singh

  The Battle of Gujerat was a disaster to Punjabi arms from which they could scarcely hope to recover. The coup de grace was however delivered by the arch-traitor Gulab Singh Dogra. He helped Abbott to cut off Sher Singh Attariwala’s retreat towards the frontier. The prospect of continuing the fight with Afghan help was thus obviated. He also arranged for the supply of boats for the British army to cross the Jhelum. Sher Singh tried to negotiate terms but the British insisted on unconditional surrender.

  On 14th March 1849, both the Attariwala Sardars, father and son, came to the British camp at Hurmel near Rawalpindi with their faces covered under their shawls and gave up their swords to General Gilbert. They were followed by batches of hundreds. ‘The reluctance of some of the old Khalsa veterans to surrender their arms was evident. Some could not restrain their tears; while on the faces of others, rage and hatred were visibly depicted’, wrote General Thackwell. The remark of one veteran greybeard, as he put down his gun, summed up the history of the Punjab: ‘Aj Ranjit Singh mar gaya (Today Ranjit Singh has died).’

  Of 29th March 1849, Mr. Eliot, Lord Dalhousie’s Secretary, called a durbar in the fort. Dalip Singh took his seat on the throne of the Punjab. Eliot then read the proclamation declaring the kingdom of the Punjab at an end. The Koh-i-noor diamond was handed over by the young Maharajah and he stepped down from his illustrious father’s throne—never to sit on it again. Indeed, Maharajah Ranjit Singh was dead!

  Postscript

  What happened to the characters who played such dramatic roles in the downfall of the kingdom of the Punjab?

  Maharajah Dalip Singh was only ten when his kingdom was annexed. In those ten years he had seen his mother grossly insulted by low upstarts, exploited by the ambitious, and misused by men of lust; he had seen relations and friends murdered before his eyes, and he had seen the best of men behave in the vilest manner. He was seated on the throne and had his feet kissed in public by men who had no compunction in calling him a bastard when they wanted to. He wore the world’s greatest diamond on his arm but was denied expenses to maintain himself and his mother with dignity. He was a frightened, effeminate young man who had had enough of the Punjab and the Punjabis and wanted nothing better than to get away from both.

  Lord Dalhousie appointed Dr. Login to be tutor-companion to Dalip and the two were allowed residence in Fatehgarh in Uttar Pradesh. Within a few months of the Englishman’s tutelage Dalip Singh expressed the desire to renounce the Sikh faith, accept conversion to Christianity and go to England. Dalhousie was delighted to hear of this—not because he felt that the Church would gain an important adherent, but because it would forever kill Dalip’s chances of being acknowledged by the Sikhs as their Maharajah. ‘Politically we could desire nothing better, for it destroys his possible influence for ever,’ he wrote. After two years of probation the young Maharajah’s hair was shorn and he was baptized a Christian. Dalhousie was very moved by the event. ‘If ever the finger of God wrote upon the wall, it did in the sight of this boy, and to the touching of his heart.’

  Dalip also wanted to give up being a Punjabi and turn himself into an English country-gentleman. At first Dalhousie was a little apprehensive of this move, but then realised that he could turn Dalip’s anglomania to the total destruction of the Sikh royal family. He decided that the Maharajah should be given a companion. The person chosen was Dalip’s nephew, Prince Shiv Dev Singh, the son of the late Maharajah Sher Singh and the only other surviving member of the direct line of Ranjit Singh. The motive for the choice was candidly stated by Dalhousie. ‘Shiv Dev Singh is an intelligent little boy with a foolish mother, who is too much inclined to puff up the child with notions that he is the only hopeful Maharajah now, since Dalip has become a Christian. Hence we thought it best for him to go with his uncle.’

  Dalhousie presented Dalip with a copy of the Bible as a parting present ‘as the best of all gifts, since in it alone will be found the secret of real happiness either in this world or in that which is to come’.

  In England, Dalip Singh became a frequent visitor to Buckingham Palace and was treated by Queen Victoria as her godson. He was given an allowance of £40,000 a year and a large estate in the county of Suffolk. In 1861 he returned to India for a short while and took his mother back with him to England. Two years later he came back again carrying Jindan’s ashes. On his way to India he met a half-caste girl, Bamba Muller, the daughter of an Abyssinian woman by a German trader, and married her in Alexandria. The two lived in Suffolk for some years and raised a numerous but undistinguished progeny.

  Dalip and his Ethiopian Maharani became prominent figures in English social circles. They began to live beyond their allowance. The nagging of creditors and the hollow tedium of social life soon disillusioned the Maharajah with the European way of living. He began to toy with the idea of returning to India and reclaiming his kingdom. He opened correspondence with several Indian Princes and Sikh Sardars. To make his chances better, he renounced Christianity with the same alacrity as he had embraced it and proclaimed his reconversion to Sikhism. He tried to come to India but was turned back at Aden. The experience made him more bitter and he began to describe himself as the ‘implacable foe of the British’. He tried to win the support of the French Government, the Tsar, the Kaiser and other European rulers; he set up an émigré one-man government and appointed one of the Sandhawalias to be his Chief Minister. He threatened to mount an invasion of India through the North-West frontier. Neither in the Punjab nor elsewhere in India did any one take Dalip Singh seriously. The bout of megalomania lasted a few years. On being assured that his debts would be cleared, he made an abject apology to the Queen for his past conduct, and resumed his profligate living. On the death of his Ethiopian wife, he married a French woman. He died on 23rd October 1893 in a hotel in Paris.

  Dalip’s mother, Jindan, had been exiled in July 1848. Her stipend was successively reduced from Rs. lakhs to to Rs. 48,000 and finally to Rs. 12,000 per year. She was stripped of all her private jewellery before she was sent to Benares. On 18th April 1849, she eluded the Security Police and escaped to Kathmandu. She probably expected a popular rising against the British or hoped that the Gurkhas would help her liberate the Punjab. Disappointed in her expectations, she left her refuge and in 1861 was allowed to rejoin her son in England. She set up an establishment of her own in Kensington, where she died two years later—a very sad and disappointed woman. Her last wish was: ‘Do not let my bones rot in this inhospitable country. Take me back to India.’ Her son brought her ashes to Hardwar to be scattered in the Ganges.

  Dewan Mulraj was arrested and brought to Lahore to be tried for the murders of Vans Agnew and Anderson. The trial was a legal farce as Lord Dalhousie had already made up his mind on the guilt of the Dewan. Three months before the hearing, Dalhousie wrote: ‘I cannot hang him, but I will do what he will think a thousand times worse: I will send him across the sea, what they call “black water” and dread far more than death.’ The court consisting of three Englishmen carried out his instructions. It found Mulraj guilty of being an accessory to the murder of the two officers and sentenced him to death. The sentence was commuted to transportation for life. As Dalhousie had foreseen, Mulraj was terrified of being taken across the ‘kala pani’, and fell ill waiting for the boat at Calcutta. He asked to be taken to Benares to die. The request was conceded. The Dewan died on the way to the holy city, on 11th August 1851 at the age of thirty-six.

  Godar Singh, the real perpetrator of the Multan murders, was convicted and hanged.

  Kahan Singh Man, the man who was destined to take Mulraj’s place as Governor of Multan, met an undeservedly sad end. After the murders of the English officers, he and his young son were arrested and locked up in the fort dungeon with fetters on their feet. The explosion of the powder magazine on 30th December 1848 not only destroyed most of the defending garrison but also brought down the ceiling of the prison-house. Some days after the British had taken over the fort, the rubble was cleared. Beneath the ca
ved-in walls of the dungeon were found two skeletons: one of an adult, the other of a child. Both had iron fetters round their ankles.

  Chattar Singh and Sher Singh Attariwala were treated as prisoners of war and after the new masters were firmly in the saddle, released on parole to live in retirement in their village of Attari. Despite their efforts to prevent it, the Attariwalas continued to be lionised by the masses. The President of the Punjab Board utilised a flimsy excuse to get rid of them. The Attariwalas had fed Brahmins in their village during a solar eclipse. This was construed as a breach of the terms of parole. The President had them rearrested and ordered their deportation. It was a clean sweep. Along with the Attariwalas, others like Lal Singh Moraria were also arrested. Both Chattar Singh and Sher Singh died in exile.

  There were other characters in the epic struggle of whom little has been recorded in books of history. When the Attariwalas and their armies laid down their arms, many men resolved to continue the struggle for freedom. The most celebrated amongst them were Bhai Maharaj Singh, Colonel Rachpal Singh and Narain Singh. They went from village to village trying to rouse the peasantry not to give in to the foreigner. The British promised handsome rewards for their capture—alive or dead—but the people did not betray the leaders. Ultimately the police net closed round these brave men. Narain Singh was taken alive; Colonel Rachpal Singh was captured near Aligarh, but after he had been mortally wounded. On the night of 28th December 1849, Bhai Maharaj Singh on whose head there was a prize of Rs. 10,000 was taken with a band of twenty-one unarmed followers. When he was brought to Jullundur prison, the guards put their rifles on the ground and went down on their knees to bow to him. For many days people from neighbouring villages—Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs—came to Jullundur to worship the walls in which the Bhai was imprisoned. ‘The Guru is no ordinary man,’ wrote Mr. Vansittart, who had arrested him, ‘he is to the natives what Jesus is to the most zealous of Christians.’ The Government could not risk a public trial in India and decided to deport him to Singapore. For three years, the Bhai was kept in a solitary cell. He died on 5th July 1856.

  The spot where Bhai Maharaj Singh was cremated is today marked by a small shrine. A big hospital has been built near it. At all hours of the day or night, groups of men and women—Chinese, Malays, Tamils and Punjabis—come to pay their homage by leaving offerings of money and flowers, by burning joss-sticks and lighting oil lamps. A legend has grown that the blessings of the Saint buried in the shrine ensures success on the operating table. None of them have ever heard of the name of Bhai Maharaj Singh. He is simply known as the Baba Karni Wala—the old man of miracles.

  In the Punjab, the memories of the men who fought the battles of Ferozeshahr and Sabraon, Chillianwala and Gujerat were soon forgotten. In the Great Munity of 1857, only eight years after the annexation of their kingdom, the Punjabis helped their erstwhile conquerors to defeat their Hindustani compatriots. A new generation of Punjabis who disowned their past was born. Instead of having nostalgic regret over the passing of the last independent kingdom of India many were proud to be the foremost in loyalty to the British Crown; instead of boasting of their forefathers’ achievements in hurling back foreign invaders, they were pleased to be known as ‘The Sword arm of the British Empire’. Thus was the sponge of oblivion passed over the slate of history.

  Author’s Note

  This little book tells the story of the fall of the kingdom of the Punjab. It covers a period of ten years, from the death of Maharajah Ranjit Singh on the afternoon of 27th June 1839 to the morning of 14th March 1849 when the Punjabi armies laid down arms. Every character and incident mentioned in this narrative is based on contemporary historical records.

  I wish to place on record my gratitude to the Rockefeller Foundation by whose munificence I was able to devote three years exclusively to research and the writing of Sikh history; this book is a by-product of that study. I would also like to acknowledge my indebtedness to M. L. Ahluwalia of the National Archives and my colleague and collaborator Miss Yvonne Le Rougetel who has assisted me in completing this work.

  Khushwant Singh

  Authors Club

  London S. W. 1.

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  First published by Orient Longman Ltd 1962

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  Copyright © Mala Dayal 2014

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  ISBN: 978-0-670-08770-9

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