by Anita Anand
Originally Dhanna was a Sunam man and, presuming on the hometown connection, Tehal turned to him for help. Thanks to Baba Dhanna’s recommendation, Tehal joined legions of dirt-encrusted men carrying wet mud from the newly carved waterways. Dhanna also took Tehal to work for him as a part-time servant,9 boosting his income a little.
After barely a year, Baba Dhanna was transferred from Nilowal to another canal site on the other side of the province.10 The departure spelled disaster for the young Kamboj family. With his benefactor gone, Tehal Singh lost his job and only sources of income. Bundling up his family, he looked for work further afield.
Low-skilled, low-paid work was available on the Raj’s railways. Tehal was posted to a village called Upali, some 60 miles west of Sunam. His home, a hut even more rudimentary than the one he had left behind in Sunam, was surrounded by dense jungle scrub. The job involved raising and lowering Upali’s main railway barrier for passing trains11 – long, hard, mind-numbing work, and the beating sun was relentless. Tehal kept his infant children close, feeding them milk from a goat he tied to the crossing.12
The jungle was home to many predators, and years later local people would tell an apocryphal story about Tehal’s youngest boy, Sher Singh. At no more than five years of age, he was left unattended and tethered to the barrier with the goat. A wolf emerged from the scrub, attracted by the smell of boy and beast. As it prepared to leap, Sher Singh supposedly picked up his father’s axe and swung it wildly, wounding the wolf and forcing it back into the jungle.13 Some stories replace the wolf with a leopard.14
The very idea of a small boy picking up a heavy axe and wielding it at a snarling animal seems so far-fetched that it is more than likely that this story attached itself retrospectively to the man this young boy would one day become.
The pressure of work and raising his children by himself eventually took its toll on Tehal Singh. In October 1907, he became too ill to operate the Upali crossing. Tormented by an exhaustion that never seemed to leave him, fearing for his boys, the widower packed his meagre possessions again and set off for Amritsar, home of the Golden Temple, the most holy shrine of the Sikhs.
There is a saying in Punjab that, loosely translated, means: ‘Even the most troubled soul finds peace at the Golden Temple.’ Tehal was not merely troubled; he was desperate when he started the 150-mile trek from Upali. The main arterial route into the city, the Tarn Taran road, was busy at the best of times, a hectic current of carts filled with produce and pilgrims. Too poor to afford a donkey, let alone a cart, Tehal and his family travelled on foot. The usual flow of people was significantly swollen thanks to the impending festival season.
Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, and the Sikh festival Bandi Chhor Divas were fast approaching. Punjabis from all over the province would converge on the city15 for days of fasting, feasting and festivity. On Diwali night itself a moonless sky would fill with fireworks. Millions of little clay lamps would freckle the earth.
Tehal Singh forced one foot in front of the other knowing that Amritsar would be bursting with visitors during the religious month. People would need their bags carried, clothes washed and latrines cleaned. A man like Tehal might find work in the city, yet every step took its toll on his feverish body.
Somewhere on the Tarn Taran road, too tired to go on, Tehal Singh sat down to rest near a bhainswala pond,16 a watering hole where buffaloes stop to drink. He never got up again. Drawn by the cries of his frightened children, a group of holy men rushed to help.17 They took the unconscious Tehal Singh to the nearby Ram Bagh hospital, but he never opened his eyes again. The actual cause of death is unknown. Such details were rarely recorded for lower-caste deaths.
With nobody left to look after them, seven-year-old Sher Singh and his nine-year-old brother were taken under the wing of the same travelling priests who had helped their father. They knew of an ashram in Bhatinda,18 not far from Sunam. One of the men even claimed to know a member of the orphaned boys’ family, a distant relative called Chanchal Singh.19 Grief-stricken and alone in the world, the children had no choice but to wait with strangers for an uncle they barely knew.
In India, blood ties are supremely important, and when Chanchal Singh heard about his cousin’s death and the plight of his two boys, he tried his best to meet his obligations. Chanchal was poor, too, and it soon became clear that he could not feed the extra mouths, nor could any of his Kamboj clan. With a heavy heart Chanchal took the children to the Central Khalsa Orphanage in Amritsar20 and begged them to take them in.
The superintendent of the orphanage, established and run by observant Sikhs, was a man called Sohan Singh. His father had also once worked on the railways, and that awoke a sense of kinship in him. He took the boys in and told Chanchal they would have all that they needed for as long as they needed it.21
The admissions ledger for the orphanage shows Tehal’s sons formally accepted on 28 October. From the courtyard of their new home, during their darkest hour, they would see the skies light up above them as the rest of Amritsar rejoiced.
The orphanage saw fit to baptise the children soon after their arrival, washing them clean of their past and caste. Born again, Sher and Sadhu were given new names. Sahdu became Mukta, which means ‘one who has escaped the cycle of reincarnation’. Sher Singh became Udham Singh. Whether the name was inspired by his behaviour, it would certainly prove to be prophetic. ‘Udham’ translates into English as ‘the upheaval’.
Home to around a dozen children, the Khalsa orphanage fostered strong bonds of brotherhood between its children. Udham became known affectionately as Ude by his friends and, despite the rigorous and repetitive regime, he thrived. Boys rose at four in the morning, bathed in cold water, and recited prayers for two hours every day.22 After a simple breakfast, lessons began, both in the classroom and the workshop. By filling their days this way the orphanage hoped to give their charges both discipline and a trade.
By all accounts, although not very taken with reading and writing, Udham showed an early aptitude for carpentry. People remembered seeing him around the orphanage, holding his brother’s hand.23 Shared tragedy had made the boys inseparable.
As Udham Singh got used to his new life, one of the most powerful men in the world was trying to do the same. Born during the reign of his grandmother Queen Victoria, Prince George Frederick Ernest Albert was never supposed to be king. Both his father, Albert Edward, and his elder brother, Prince Albert Victor, stood ahead of him in the line of succession; however, when his brother died unexpectedly at the age of only twenty-eight, the course of George’s life altered irrevocably. His father, King Edward VII, died in May 1910, and George was named King Emperor. Overnight, he became arguably the most powerful man in the world.
King George V’s coronation was marked by an enormous pageant in London. ‘The Festival of Empire’ was epic in scale and described as ‘a Social Gathering of the British Family’, exemplifying ‘those invisible bonds which hold together the greatest empire the world has ever known’24. Holding on to that empire would become the single greatest challenge of George V’s reign.
The new king’s first major engagement was to be Ireland, where members of the ‘British Family’ had been struggling to break free of it for years. The Irish turned out in droves to welcome George, despite Palace fears that the nationalists might hijack the affair. One British newspaper called the visit a breakthrough in Anglo-Irish relations: ‘Half the great fog of misunderstanding and suspicion that has brooded so long over the relations between England and Ireland has been cleared away in the seven-mile roar of welcome.’25
Basking in Irish success, Palace officials were now looking forward to the next leg of George V’s coronation tour. Like Ireland, India, too, had been growing increasingly unruly of late. A visit from the new monarch, it was thought, might calm those waters as well.
In anticipation, the viceroy, Lord Hardinge, declared he would hold a great durbar in His Majesty’s honour. The word durbar usually refers to the courts o
f Indian emperors, but when Hardinge used it he promised a proxy coronation, an unforgettable ceremony that would show off the full might and splendour of the British Raj. December 1911 would be divided between Christ and Crown.
DELHI, DECEMBER 1911
The moment the king accepted the viceroy’s invitation, Michael O’Dwyer’s social calendar was saturated. The durbar promised a heady mix of Western pomp and pageantry coupled with exotic Eastern opulence. Though the balls, concerts, polo matches and hunts would not disappoint, they would pale in comparison to the event itself. The coronation durbar, due to take place on 12 December 1911, would surpass even the wildest imaginations. Logistics were epic in scale – epic and expensive.
Almost a million pounds was spent, worth more than a hundred times that amount today. Thirteen villages next to the city had been cleared and flattened in order to create an area vast enough to accommodate the 25,000 VIPs. Maharajahs, princes, nawabs, aristocrats, noblemen and tribal chiefs had been summoned to Delhi from all over India. For weeks they had been arriving, accompanied by vast retinues of soldiers, horses and elephants.
Each potentate was allocated a space reflecting his importance. These they filled with temporary canvas palaces, complete with harems, stables and in some cases entire pleasure gardens replete with statues and miraculously plumbed fountains. Each tried to outdo the glory of his neighbours.
Michael O’Dwyer must have received his invitation with sheer delight. He had spent the past fifteen years working hard to earn his place at the top table, impressing his superiors in a series of diverse postings. He spent time in the craggy wilds of the North-West Frontier Province, settled land claims and collected revenues in the lush rural belt of Punjab, and dispensed British justice in the arid deserts of Rajputana. More recently, Michael had won the trust of the nizams of Hyderabad, showing the viceroy he could call upon diplomatic skills, not immediately obvious to those who knew him and his plain-speaking ways.
As Michael’s reputation had grown, so too had his family. Una had given him two children: a daughter in 1898, also named Una, then two years later a son, called John after Michael’s beloved father.
Michael kept his family close, though this affection sometimes put them in harm’s way. Once, while settling a boundary dispute in Rajputana’s Alwar district, his wife and little girl, barely two years old at the time, came out to meet him. While he looked through maps and wrangled with bickering bureaucrats, his little girl had somehow toddled off: ‘When I finished she was not to be found.’27 Icy panic set in as Michael tore up and down the river bank hoping to find her tiny footsteps in the mud: ‘After some search the tracks were found leading upstream, and the people were horror-stricken as they told me they led up into the favourite haunts of the local tigers.’28
Fiercely fond of his daughter, Michael caught up with her before the tigers did. He would have done anything to protect his Una. The bond with her was far closer than any he would be able to forge with his only son.
John Chevalier O’Dwyer, more reserved than his sister, was chronically short-sighted. Bottle-thick glasses ruled him out of the riding and hunting pursuits his father loved so passionately. Without these shared interests the two had little to bring them together. For months at a time John was sent back to boarding school in England, and though these long separations were hard on him, the days he spent by his father’s side were not much easier. John Chevalier was nothing like his namesake, and the difference weighed heavily on the boy.
Perhaps sensing his failure to live up to expectations, young John elected to go by the name of Jack as soon as he had some choice in the matter and would go by that name for the rest of his life.
The durbar of 1911 fell during the children’s Christmas holidays, so it is more than likely that Jack and Una were with their mother and father to see the arrival of their new king, and to hear the momentous news that would change their lives for ever.
Some 80,000 army troops were drafted to Delhi for the coronation durbar, both to march in endless parades and to provide security for visiting dignitaries. The Raj’s police force also found itself significantly bolstered for the event, a slew of new recruits hastily inducted into the ranks. Among the new intake was a fresh-faced 21-year-old Irishman named Philip Vickery.
Vickery was given the seemingly mundane task of guarding the king emperor’s bedroom during his stay.29 It was not the job any thrusting young officer would have picked for himself, yet despite his rather soft induction into Imperial security, Vickery would go on to become one of the most hardened men in British colonial intelligence.
Michael O’Dwyer had always been an immensely social creature, with an uncanny ability to hold both a room and his liquor. Once, when facing arrest in Russia for travelling on the wrong documents, he had managed to win his freedom by drinking the arresting officer, an old Muscovite general, under the table. The durbar, with its ceaseless pace and endless good cheer, was just the kind of occasion where Michael could shine.
Those with weaker constitutions must have suffered terribly on 12 December, when soon after dawn they were herded into Coronation Park. It would prove to be a swelteringly hot day, and they were forced to wait for hours, heads pounded by the sun and the sound of brass bands.
At precisely midday, just as the sun was at its highest, the royal couple arrived. Resplendent in their heavy coronation robes, they ascended the high dais to a deafening fanfare of trumpets. To add to the weight of the occasion, the king emperor had chosen to wear his Imperial Crown of India, containing 6,170 diamonds, sapphires, emeralds and rubies. Head held high, King George acknowledged the slow and steady stream of men who stepped forward to bow before him. Whites went first.
The viceroy, Charles Hardinge, 1st Baron Hardinge of Penshurst, led the way. He was followed by the commander-in-chief of the army and members of the governor-general’s executive council; a litany of lieutenant governors; senior members from a variety of government-departments; judges and clergy. Only when the last of these had returned to their seats was it the Indians’ turn to genuflect.
One after another, maharajahs, rajas and nawabs weighed down by jewels came forward to the sound of tailored gun salutes. The importance of each man could be measured by the bone-jarring blasts accompanying their bows. A complicated diplomatic formula had awarded gun salutes based on the wealth and strategic importance of their kingdoms. The greater the number of bangs, the more important the potentate.
To gasps of astonishment, a man worth a significant number of cannon blasts, the maharajah of Baroda, otherwise known as Sayajirao Gaekwad III, broke every single rule he had been instructed to follow: ‘He arrived at the amphitheatre in full dress and covered in the historic Baroda jewels, but removed them all just before the moment came for him to approach the king.’30 By appearing plainly before the king emperor, he was in effect dressing him down. ‘On reaching the shamiana [dais] he made a cursory bow from the waist, stepped backwards and then, wheeling around, turned his back on the royal couple and walked from their presence nonchalantly twirling a gold-topped walking stick.’31
The calculated insult was designed to show that even those who prospered under the Raj chafed at its existence. The Gaekwad resented the enforced gilded grovelling and wanted his people to know it. He was seen laughing all the way back to his seat. The British would punish him for his impudence for years to come.
Homage and humiliations complete, the king emperor rose to make his address. Even the most jaded were forced to sit up and take notice. Had their artillery-battered ears heard right? Had George V just announced the reunification of Bengal?
Bengal had been partitioned six years earlier, in 1905, by the then viceroy, Lord Curzon. In cleaving the province in two, Curzon had separated the largely Muslim eastern areas from the largely Hindu west. The Congress Party, a nascent nationalist organisation that would one day have the likes of Gandhi and Nehru at the helm, was growing particularly strong in Bengal. The old ‘divide and rule’ adage guided C
urzon’s hand, as he explained to the then secretary of state for India, St John Broderick:
Calcutta is the centre from which the Congress Party is manipulated throughout the whole of Bengal, and indeed the whole of India. Its best wire pullers and its most frothy orators all reside here . . . Any measure in consequence that would divide the Bengali-speaking population; that would permit independent centres of activity and influence to grow up; that would dethrone Calcutta from its place as the centre of successful intrigue, or that would weaken the influence of the lawyer class, who have the entire organisation in their hands, is intensely and hotly resented by them.32
Curzon’s partition ripped through neighbourhoods, dividing Hindu and Muslim communities, upending a harmonious co-existence that had stood for generations. Curzon knew the people of Bengal would object, and advised the secretary of state to block his ears: ‘The outcry will be loud and very fierce, but as a native gentleman said to me – “my countrymen always howl until a thing is settled; then they accept it.’ ”33
Bengal never accepted its mutilation. From the moment the province was divided, a campaign of resistance erupted. The mass boycotting of British goods – swadeshi, as the Indians called it – spread from the newly created rift. Like burning lava it oozed from Bengal and into the rest of India, spreading hatred against the British.
Some of the more extreme Bengali nationalists disappeared underground after 1905, only to surface later to commit acts of targeted violence. Sir Andrew Fraser, the lieutenant governor of Bengal, despised for his own role in Curzon’s partition, was lucky to escape with his life on three separate occasions. In 1907, two attempts were made to blow up his official train; one used so much explosive it left a five-foot-wide crater where his carriage had been moments before. The following year an Indian student tried to shoot Fraser at close range and was foiled only when his weapon misfired.