Article 4. – This treaty, consisting of four articles, having been settled and concluded at Amritsar, on the 25th day of April 1809, Mr C.T. Metcalfe has delivered to the Raja of Lahore a copy of the same in English and Persian, under his seal and signature; and the Raja has delivered another copy of the same under his seal and signature, and C.T. Metcalfe engages to procure within the space of two months a copy of the same, duly ratified by the Right Honourable the Governor-General in Council, on the receipt of which by the Raja, the present treaty shall be deemed complete and binding on both parties, and the copy of it now delivered to the Raja shall be returned.
[Ratified by the Governor-General
Lord Minto on 21 May 1809]
The British fully honoured the treaty in the early years despite being irked by the rapid expansion of the Sikh state. They turned down appeals for help against Ranjit Singh from both Sansar Chand of Kangra and the Gurkhas. During the first unsuccessful siege of Multan in 1810 by the Lahore Durbar, the beleaguered city’s governor was similarly told that in view of the treaty there was little the British could do to help him.
The British were to adhere to the treaty, to Ranjit Singh’s advantage, on other occasions as well. In 1819 Kashmir’s Afghan governor Azim Khan pleaded with them to place Kashmir under their protection but was refused. Shah Zaman and Shah Shuja, who also asked for British intervention, were turned down. When an over-zealous British envoy to Afghanistan, Alexander Burnes, tried to persuade Company officials to help the Afghans take back Peshawar from Ranjit Singh, the British governor-general Lord Auckland, after some thought, turned down the suggestion.
How did the British view the treaty when it came to serving their interests? According to Captain Claude Wade, British political agent at Ludhiana: ‘Ranjit Singh has hitherto derived nothing but advantage from his alliance with us. While we have been engaged in consolidating our power in Hindustan, he has been extending his conquests throughout the Punjab and across the Indus, and as we are now beginning to prescribe limits to his power, which it cannot be supposed he will regard with complacency, he is now more likely to encourage than to withdraw from an alliance, which may hold out to him a hope of creating a balance of power.’25
In the final summing up, did the Sutlej Treaty benefit Ranjit Singh more than it did the British? A consideration of the different mindsets of the two signatories will help to begin to answer this question. The British, of course, were pastmasters in the art of diplomacy; they were able to judge precisely where their self-interest lay and had centuries of experience in wars, battles, victories, defeats, annexations, treaties and much else. Ranjit Singh, by contrast, a school drop-out in his twenties, had no experience of negotiating treaties or dealing with Europeans. Yet, relying entirely on his own unaided perception and evaluation, he arrived at a clear and intelligent assessment of his adversary’s strengths. After the eight-month negotiations he got what he wanted from the treaty.
Having witnessed how the British had dealt with the Marathas in 1803 after Jaswant Rao Holkar had seized Delhi and ravaged the East India Company’s territories between the Jamuna and the Sutlej, he had a prime example to go by. Holkar had got no help from the Punjab Sardars of that region, and subsequently he had been defeated and forced to come to terms with the British. The conclusion Ranjit Singh drew from this was that he could never build up his Sikh state without accurately assessing his own limitations against his adversary’s advantages.
Some of his critics suggest that the treaty showed him in a poor light since he abandoned all the Sikhs living between the Jamuna and the Sutlej, but this is to discount his strategy and his vision for the future. He wanted the Sikh state to extend far beyond the boundaries of the Punjab. He had his eyes on prized Afghan possessions all the way up to Kabul, as also other vast territories in northern India. So the first article of the treaty assured him that the British government would not concern itself with his territorial acquisitions north of the River Sutlej. It was because of his decisive victories against the Afghans that he was able to seal the routes through which invaders had entered India over the centuries. Had he not signed the treaty and secured his southern boundary effectively, he could not have achieved what he did so spectacularly.
Ranjit Singh’s success as a statesman with regard to the Sutlej Treaty can only be judged with this consideration in mind. Even Metcalfe, who was often at odds with him and robustly represented British interests in the period preceding the finalization of the treaty, acknowledged his gain. His suave remark to the Maharaja on signing it, ‘Your Excellency will reap the fruits of the alliance with the British in a period of twenty years’,26 was to be proved right – in fact in less than twenty years.
With his southern border secured, Ranjit Singh now began to pursue his ambitions of strengthening and extending his kingdom in the north. Zaman Shah would give him little more trouble. On returning home after being ousted from Lahore he had been plunged back into the thick of court intrigues and as a consequence of his execution of a powerful tribal leader had been blinded by his own younger brother Mahmud. His other brother Shah Shuja had fled to India, taking with him, along with his hopes of regaining the Afghan throne, the famous Koh-i-noor diamond.
Shah Shuja sought Ranjit Singh’s help to try to regain his kingdom. A cordial but wary Ranjit Singh was not keen on allowing a claimant to the Afghan throne to use Multan, on the south bank of the Ravi. as his base, which in the Sikh ruler’s view was an integral part of India. So in a sudden assault on Multan city he invested it himself in February 1810, although Multan Fort under its brave commander Muzaffar Khan held out until it eventually fell to the Sikhs in early 1818.
Shah Shuja returned briefly to Kabul for a brief stint on the throne before being thrown out again. This time he headed for the northerly town of Attock as its governor Jahan Dad Khan’s guest. It was an unwise choice because the governor, on learning that Shuja was in touch with Wazir Fateh Khan, the power behind the Afghan throne whom Dad Khan passionately hated, had Shuja manacled and dispatched to his brother, Ata Mohammed, governor of Kashmir. Shuja soon found himself in a dungeon, cut off from his wife Wafa Begum and his blinded brother Zaman Shah. Even though these two, now resident in Rawalpindi, were living on a pension they received from Ranjit Singh, Zaman Shah was busy intriguing with outside powers to regain his throne. Ranjit Singh had both families brought to Lahore where he could keep an eye on them. They were, however, honoured as state guests.
Shuja’s wife, Wafa Begum, now entered upon the scene. Desperate over her husband’s fate, she begged Ranjit Singh to rescue him from Ata Mohammed’s hold in Kashmir before the latter dispatched him, in the style of her fellow Afghans. She offered Ranjit the Koh-i-noor diamond in return for sending a military expedition to Kashmir.27
Ranjit Singh, attracted by the idea, now turned his eyes to Kashmir which was a prized possession of the Afghans, who had in turn taken it from the Mughals in 1752. Ranjit Singh was drawn to it for many reasons. He was lured as much by its wondrous lakes, valleys, snow-covered peaks, saffron fields, flora, fauna and flowering trees as by its exquisite crafts – carpets, shawls, walnut woodwork, jewellery, sapphires, beautiful women and much else. In 1812 the excuse he needed for a dramatic entry into Kashmir was, ironically enough, again provided by the Afghans, just as in the case of Attock and Multan.
Wazir Fateh Khan of the Barakzai tribe in Afghanistan, who had caused Zaman Shah to be blinded, wanted to lay hands on Shah Shuja, possessor of the Koh-i-noor and currently the Kashmir governor’s captive. But there was no way he could get to Kashmir with his forces since Ranjit Singh’s Sikh army stood in his way at Attock. So he had to ask Ranjit Singh for his help in the invasion of Kashmir. With the modalities carefully worked out to the advantage of the Lahore Darbar, the combined Sikh and Afghan forces headed for Shergarh where Shuja was imprisoned.
The man Ranjit Singh handpicked to command the Sikh army in this joint expedition was Diwan Mohkam Chand, an outstanding commander and wise i
n the ways of the world. It did not take him long to see through the game the Afghans were planning to play – to outpace Diwan Mohkam Chand, reach Shergarh before him and take custody not only of Shuja but of the treasury as well. The Diwan informed Ranjit Singh of this plan, who told him to outwit Fateh Khan and, if he persisted in his double-crossing, to deal with him accordingly.
Mohkam Chand rose to the occasion by taking a more precipitous but shorter route to Shergarh Fort and mounting an assault on it before the Afghans were anywhere in sight. Completely taken aback by being so easily outwitted, Fateh Khan hastened to join in the assault, and when Shergarh fell he and his men put their energies into looting the treasury while the Sikhs mounted a massive search for Shuja. On finding him they swiftly transferred him to the Sikh camp and from there to Lahore.
With Shah Shuja and Wafa Begum reunited in Lahore, the Koh-i-noor again became a bone of contention, this time between Shuja and Wafa on one side and Ranjit Singh on the other. Having promised the Koh-i-noor to Ranjit Singh when she was fearful for her husband’s life, Wafa and her husband were now most reluctant to hand it over to their rescuer. But he had his way and took possession of it on 1 June 1813.
‘Take five strong men,’ said Shah Shuja to Ranjit Singh on being asked the value of the Koh-i-noor. ‘Let the first throw a stone northward, the second eastward, the third southward, the fourth westward, and the fifth upward. Fill all the space thus outlined with gold and you will still not have achieved the value of the Mountain of Light.’28
The history of the Koh-i-noor diamond is as fascinating as the stone itself but can be only briefly touched on here. It was seized around 1306 from Rai Mahlak Deo, ruler of Malwa in the Deccan by Ala-ud-din Khilji, Delhi’s ruling Sultan. Emperor Ibrahim Lodhi of the Lodhi Dynasty then acquired it for a time, before it was taken over by the Mughals. Babur records in his memoirs that ‘every appraiser has estimated its value at two-and-a-half days’ food for the whole world. Apparently it weighs eight misqals [approximately 188 carats]. Humayun [his son] offered it to me when I arrived at Agra; I just gave it back to him.’29 Oval in shape, brilliant, colourless, around one and a quarter inches in length and just under one and a half inches in width, the Koh-i-noor came from the Golconda mines in south India, the source of other famous diamonds such as the great Mughal, the Orlov, the Pigot, Regent, Sancy and Hope. The Golconda diamond mines were situated five miles south of Hyderabad between the rivers Krishna and Godavari. The Koh-i-noor disappeared for a hundred years, then surfaced again in 1656 at the court of the Mughal Shah Jahan, who set it in his peacock throne. It was forcibly taken from the Mughals by the Persian Nadir Shah when he sacked Delhi in 1739 and slaughtered 100,000 Muslims and Hindus in eight hours. Nadir Shah is credited with naming the diamond Koh-i-noor, ‘mountain of light’ in Persian. When Nadir was hacked to death in a family coup in 1747, Ahmed Shah Abdali removed the Koh-i-noor from his body, and through him it eventually came into the possession of Shah Shuja.
There was still unfinished business for Ranjit Singh to deal with. It concerned Fateh Khan’s deceitful moves during the joint expedition to Shergarh. Ranjit Singh did not take kindly to duplicity. He asked his general Mohkam Chand to annex Attock. After the battle that took place at Haidru on 9 July 1813 the Sikh forces walked in without any resistance. Four months later Wazir Fateh Khan, embittered by the loss of a major invasion route which the Afghans had traditionally taken into India, resorted to letter-writing in lieu of armed retaliation. On 25 December 1813 he wrote to Mohkam Chand: ‘Still nothing is lost. Give the fort of Attock to me so that the relations of friendship between the two parties may become strong.’ Mohkam Chand replied: ‘The fort of Attock will never be handed over to you, and the country of Kashmir will soon be conquered by us.’30 Unable to reconcile himself to the loss of Attock, he died in 1818 still obsessed with getting it back.
While the incursion into Kashmir in 1812 had been a spin-off of the Koh-i-noor’s seductive lure, the fall of Multan Fort in 1818 was due to another symbol of Afghan pride – the Zam Zama,31 the great cannon. Rated as one of the most formidable cannons in the world, it had helped Ahmed Shah Abdali win the Battle of Panipat against the Marathas. If the Koh-i-noor was soon to fall into Ranjit Singh’s hands, the legendary Zam Zama was already his, and in a supremely ironic turn of events the cannon Abdali had wanted to decimate his enemies with would now be turned by Ranjit Singh against the Afghans entrenched in Multan Fort. As the cannon tore gaping holes in the massive walls of the fort, the Nihangs, the fearsome Sikh warrior sect, launched their do-or-die attacks through them. The second of the four principal Afghan cities in India, following the annexation of Attock in 1813, was now in Sikh hands. Since Multan, a city of great antiquity from the time of Alexander the Great and a flourishing centre of trade, yielded considerable revenues, Ranjit Singh took care to appoint able governors to administer it. The third, Diwan Sawan Mal, appointed in 1821, was to be the most outstanding of all, holding the post for an unusually long spell of almost a quarter of a century.
The capitulation of Multan Fort, a significant victory at no less than a seventh attempt, was also a blot on the reputation of Ranjit Singh’s army, known for its just treatment of vanquished foes. For some reason, never satisfactorily explained, the Sikh troops seemed to have lost their sense of self-restraint when the fort fell. Every house was searched and looted. Ranjit Singh ordered his forces to give up whatever they had taken and proclaimed the death penalty in case of default, but no evidence has survived as to whether the death penalty was ever actually carried out. Only some shawls, utensils, rich apparel, books and carpets worth a few lakhs of rupees were returned but no gold or silver coins or jewellery or precious objects.32
It is scarcely possible to list comprehensively all the territories Ranjt Singh annexed to the Sikh state, because in addition to outright annexations many were left under the political and administrative control of their chieftains or rulers while being under his suzerainty and subject to a tribute they paid annually to him until they were eventually taken over. Other such interim arrangements, with many variations, were also entered into. Some idea of how the Sikh empire grew out of this bewildering chequerboard of territorial acquisitions can be had from a glimpse provided over a nine-year period by the Sikh historian J.S. Grewal – the years between the Treaty of Amritsar signed in 1809 and the conquest of Multan in 1818. It was during this period, and the conquest of Kashmir and the north-west in the 1820s and 1830s, that Ranjit Singh’s realm emerged into an entity that may truly be termed an empire.
Grewal lists a number of towns which are familiar Sikh place-names:
The Sikh territories annexed by Ranjit Singh included Hariana, Jalalpur, Manawar, Islamgarh, Bajwat, Gujrat, Chunian, Dipalpur, Satghara, Jethpur, Haveli, Muhiyuddinpur, Jalandhar, Patti, Fatehgarh, Sujanpur, Hajipur, Mukerian, Rawalpindi, Sri Hargobindpur and Miani … The Hindu territories annexed by Ranjit Singh included Kangra, Sayyidgarh, Kotla, Jandiala, Samba, Kathua, Guler, Nurpur and Jaswan. With the exception of Jandiala, all these territories were in the hills close to the plains. In the process, about half a dozen chiefs were subverted, and the most powerful hill principalities of Kangra and Jammu suffered diminution…. The Muslim territories annexed by Ranjit Singh included Khushab, Kachh, Sahiwal, Kusk, Attock, Makhad, Jhang, Tulamba and Kot Nau. In the process, some Baloch and Sial chiefs were subverted and the rulers of Bahawalpur, Multan and Kabul lost some of their territories. Thus, before the conquest of Multan, the lower hills and upper and middle portions of all the five doabs fell under the effective control of Maharaja Ranjit Singh.33
There was little doubt in anyone’s mind that with the Sikhs’ conquest of Multan – the richest addition yet to their state – the next in line would be Kashmir, the second richest. And indeed, the very next year, on 3 July 1819, Sikh forces defeated the Afghan army led by its governor, Azim Khan, in a hard-fought battle at Supaiya; once again it was the Nihangs who decided the day, with their do-or-die charge against the Afghan
horsemen and infantry. The remnants of the shattered Afghans fled into the hills, and the Sikh forces entered Kashmir’s principal city, Srinagar, on 5 July. With the Afghans on the run from most of Punjab, Ranjit Singh’s thoughts now turned increasingly to the North-West Frontier, the gateway to Afghanistan and Central Asia, Peshawar being the pivotal town of this wild and unruly region. But before he launched any major moves in this direction the administration of Kashmir had to be placed on a sound footing.
Srinagar was made the capital of the Kashmir Valley, and from it the governors appointed by the Lahore court would administer this vast region. That a great deal had to be done in Kashmir after years of Afghan misrule is graphically expressed in this quatrain by Gwasha Lal Kaul:
Khwast Haq keh in zamin-e-mina rang,
Chun dil-e-nai shawad ba fughan rang,
Kard bar wai musallat Afghan ra
Bagh-e-Jamshed dad dahqan ra.
(God willed that this enchanting land
Should become stinking like the smoking reed pipe with lamentation;
Placed it under the control of Afghans,
Gave away the garden of Eden to the vulgar.)34
The first of the governors appointed to improve conditions in the woefully run and neglected valley, Moti Ram, was the son of Diwan Mohkam Chand, who had outmanoeuvred Wazir Fateh Khan in the rescue of Shah Shuja. He gave priority to the restoration of law and order and the administration of even-handed justice; he was considered an outstanding governor, compassionate, popular and by all accounts incorruptible. Kirpa Ram also had a reputation for honesty and good governance and did much to add to Srinagar’s appeal by laying out beautiful gardens such as the Rambagh Garden and another on the west side, Bud Dal (on Dal Lake) at the village of Badmarg, which is named after him, the Diwan Kirpa Ram Ka Bagh.
Empire of the Sikhs Page 11