Empire of the Sikhs

by Patwant Singh

  British plans to dismember the Sikh state were initiated with infinite attention to detail soon after the Old Lion’s death. The first and foremost step taken – which had been honed to perfection over the centuries – was not only to identify and win over, by whatever means possible, those in the Lahore Durbar who were susceptible to treasonous offers but to create further rivalries and rifts which were already beginning to weaken the Lahore Durbar, the once formidable centre of Sikh power.

  The one man with ideal qualifications for the British was Gulab Singh. To begin with, he was a great survivor. While his brothers Dhian Singh and Suchet Singh, no less wily than Gulab Singh, had not survived the many purges that had been rife after Ranjit Singh’s death, Gulab Singh had survived them all. He had also amassedan immense fortune during these turbulent times, in addition to lands and estates in Jammu. At the zenith of their power the Dogras of Jammu held jagirs worth an annual revenue of 1,897,379 rupees – Gulab Singh 737,287 rupees, Hira Singh 462,115 rupees, Suchet Singh 306,865 rupees and Dhian Singh 291,112 rupees. Of the approximate total national revenue of 32,475,000 rupees at Ranjit Singh’s death in 1839, the Jammu brothers contributed about one-third from farms, tributes and monopolies.9 Gulab Singh was aptly described as a man ‘whose aspirations left no room for pangs of conscience or purity of ideals’. It did not take the British long to identify him as their most likely instrument of policy so far as annexation of the Punjab was concerned, even though they were mistrustful of his ambitions. Wedded to their old adage of there being no permanent friends or enemies but only permanent interests, however, they were quite prepared to continue to deal with him. He was to prove the ideal ally to help them dismantle the state his mentor had so single-mindedly built.

  Two other men who now occupied centre stage but had not held any significant office during Ranjit Singh’s time were the two Brahmins, Lal Singh and Tej Singh. While Tej Singh was from the Gangetic Plain, Lal Singh came from the Gandhara Valley; both had risen in the Lahore Durbar through devious means. Yet in November 1845, in a supremely ironic twist of fate, Lal Singh was chosen as prime minister and Tej Singh as commander-in-chief of the Sikh army. Both would grievously betray the Sikh state. There were a number of others whom the British had cannily lined up to help them subvert and put an end to the Sikh empire, but the roles of these three traitors were crucial to the realization of British goals.

  It is axiomatic of life’s mysterious ways that seldom do events of any momentous significance occur without triggering off equally noteworthy incidents in response. Ranjit Singh’s death, and the self-destructive moves and betrayals of his successors, not only put paid to his dream of a strong, secular and impregnable Sikh state but made a mockery of a supremely confident and proud people inspired by ideals of their faith. Unheeding of those who were pressing on Punjab’s borders eager to lay hands on its riches, the Sikhs, already vulnerable because of their infighting, were made even more so by the traitors in their midst. The real tragedy for them was the lack of character shown by Ranjit Singh’s own kin, as seen in the previous chapter.

  Long before these events the wily George Clerk had been busily at work on Britain’s long-term interests, and he most likely had a hand in the death of Chet Singh, Kharak Singh’s right-hand man. Chet Singh, according to British intelligence, was opposed to the East India Company’s demand for the passage of its troops through Punjab, so Clerk’s advice to his moles in the Lahore court had been to get rid of him. ‘I proved to them that they may effectively remove him,’ wrote Clerk in a revealing confidential dispatch to Lord Auckland. Clerk gave encouragement to rival parties against each other.10 The classic British ploy of divide and rule.

  This matter of passage of troops had to do with a tripartite agreement that Ranjit Singh had signed with the East India Company and Shah Shuja on 26 June 1838, agreeing on an Anglo-Sikh double invasion of Afghanistan with the idea of putting Shah Shuja on the throne of Kabul, the British having persuasively used the familiar argument of a ‘looming Russian threat’ to Afghanistan and northern India. One arm of the planned invasion was to be led by Shah Shuja with British support and the other was to be a thrust by Sikh troops via Peshawar. Lord Auckland did succeed in restoring Shah Shuja to Kabul’s throne on 7 August 1839, but so much against the wishes of the Afghan people as to lead to the first Afghan War, which proved disastrous for the British. While Ranjit Singh had learnt of Kandahar’s fall in April 1839, news of the capture of Kabul and Ghazni had reached Lahore only after his death on 27 June 1839. The troops for whom Clerk was seeking passage through Punjab were British forces beginning to return from Afghanistan to their positions south of the Sutlej at the end of 1839, although full British withdrawal from Afghanistan would not take place until October 1842.11

  The request for the passage of troops was not as innocent as it seemed, because the British wished to use the opportunity thus afforded to assess the strength of the Sikh forces. The political agent at Ludhiana, accompanied by a few British officers, while returning from Afghanistan in 1841, had indeed collected detailed information on Sikh troop dispositions for the British High Command, just as Fane, commander-in-chief of the British army in India, had done before him when attending the wedding of Nau Nihal Singh in 1837. But the abuse of hospitality was to be taken still further. When the British requested the Lahore Darbar’s help after the rout of the English troops in Kabul in 1841, and the Darbar obliged by sending a force under Gulab Singh, the British tried to buy him and his men over. In the words of Henry Lawrence, who later played a key role in Punjab, ‘we need such men as the Raja [Gulab Singh] … and should bind them to us, by the only tie they recognize – self interest’.12 Gulab Singh was more than willing.

  As were two other Darbar officers of his ilk, the Brahmins Lal Singh and Tej Singh, who in Kapur Singh’s words ‘paved the way for the eventual enslavement of the Sikh people’. Their treachery, as will be evident in the following pages, was exceptional even in the annals of such base deals. While the British would have executed such wartime traitors in their own ranks, they were elated at having Tej Singh help them win against the Sikhs by betraying his troops. In the final summing up, British victories in the two Sikh Wars were not won by valour on the battlefield but because the victors were able to persuade their adversary’s key men to betray their side.

  What was becoming clear to most astute observers was that a showdown between the British and the Sikhs would soon take place; there was no way Sikh pride and self-esteem could be reconciled with the obsessive British desire to bring the whole of India under their control. The two sides were now on a collision course, and the question was when would the collision take place. The hawkish governor-general Lord Ellenborough, who had taken over from the more moderate Lord Auckland, was already preparing to mobilize a sizeable army south of the Sutlej from where Punjab could be invaded. He wrote to the Duke of Wellington on 20 April 1844 that ‘we can only consider our relations with Lahore to be those of an armed truce. I earnestly hope nothing will compel us to cross the Sutlej that we may have no attack to repel till November 1845. I shall then be prepared for anything. In the meantime we shall do all we can in a quiet way to strengthen ourselves.’13

  The political agent of the Lahore Durbar at Ludhiana, a trusted vakil (authorized agent), sent some news on British troop movements to Lahore: ‘About this time a newsletter was received … announcing that in view of the general disorder in the Punjab, the British said that the Sikhs all over Punjab had gone mad and had set their house on fire and that their neighbours feared that the fire might spread to their own house. Consequently the English Company Bahadur [the East India Company] had decided to strengthen the frontier.’14

  If the British were to attack the Sikh state, ‘since appearances had to kept up, the British had to be shown as responding to unprovoked aggression, their moves must convey a sense of noblesse oblige.’15 As so often, accuracy was sacrificed for expediency. The provocation came from Major George Broadfoot, the new Britis
h agent at Ludhiana, a man who could not abide the Sikhs and in fact had been hostile towards them for many years. His provocations included constructing cantonments at Ludhiana, Ferozepur, Ambala and Kasauli; assembling materials for pontoon bridges along the Sutlej; and declaring the cis-Sutlej possessions of the Lahore Durbar to be under British protection. Hardinge was quite approving of Broadfoot and said he was ‘in his element on the frontier’.

  The irrepressible Major’s next audacious act was to confiscate, in November 1845, two villages of the Sikh state south of the Sutlej near Ludhiana on the trumped-up charge that they were sheltering criminals. All these moves of the British left the Sikhs in no doubt of the intentions of their adversary. It was once again Cunningham who placed these developments in their true perspective. ‘Had the shrewd committees of the [Sikh] armies observed no military preparations on the part of the English, they would not have heeded the insidious exhortations of such mercenary men as Lal Singh and Tej Singh, although in former days they would have marched unenquiringly towards Delhi at the bidding of their great Maharaja … [so] when the men were tauntingly asked whether they would quietly look on while the limits of the Khalsa dominion were being reduced … they answered that they would defend with their lives all belonging to the commonwealth of Gobind and that they would march and give battle to the invaders on their own ground.’16

  Broadfoot’s scheming to precipitate an armed showdown between the two erstwhile allies was successful. This agent provocateur of major’s rank, with the full support of Governor-General Hardinge (in the words of Ellenborough, the outgoing governor-general: ‘I will not fail to make him [Hardinge] acquainted with your merits and services’17), succeeded in provoking the Sikh army to cross the Sutlej – in clear transgression of the Sutlej Treaty – under the command of Tej Singh on 12 December 1845. Hardinge declared war on the Lahore Darbar on 13 December 1845.

  This was in line with what the British had planned, and the stage was now set for some of the sleaziest conduct in the history of warfare. To stave off defeat when it stared them in the face, the British made desperate moves to encourage Tej Singh and Lal Singh – made commander-in-chief and wazir or prime minister around 8 November 1845 by the Lahore Durbar – into betraying the Sikhs during critical periods of the fighting. One of the most extraordinary actions by these two, instigated by the British, was to desist from attacking Ferozepur after the Sikh troops had crossed the Sutlej. Ferozepur was stocked with a good deal of military equipment and stores which the British were in no mind to lose to the Sikhs. Accordingly, both Tej Singh, who had already crossed the Sutlej with segments of the army, and Lal Singh, who with some cavalry units was just across the river to support the formations which had crossed over, instead of helping the Sikh troops helped the British by deflecting the Sikh army from attacking where the adversary was most vulnerable.

  Lal Singh at first refused to cross the river to help the Sikh formations on the other bank, but his troops compelled him to do so. His own personal agenda as he put it was that he ‘had not come to gain a victory over the British; his object was to solicit their goodwill and continue as minister in a dependent Punjab’.18 He had thoughtfully informed the assistant political agent at Ferozepur on 12 December that he ‘desired nothing more than that the Sikh Army be destroyed’.19

  Tej Singh’s own goal was no different. He prevailed on his troops to move towards Mudki, on the pretext that there was much bigger game there than at Ferozepur which lay ahead. To top it all, an assurance was also secretly sent to the British on 16 December 1845 that Ferozepur would not be attacked, this despite the fact that Ferozepur with only 7,000 defenders would have fallen like a house of cards before the Sikh force of 35,000 men, lacking the fortifications to withstand the Sikh heavy artillery.20

  At Mudki, too, deceit and betrayal were in evidence on 18 December 1845. As a detachment of the Sikhs attacked the British force, Lal Singh deserted his men. Although the outcome of this battle was victory of sorts for the British, ‘The success of the English was not so complete as should have been achieved by the victors in so many battles.’21 The British at this point decided to join forces with Sir John Littler who had been commanding Ferozepur about ten miles from Mudki. Lal Singh persuaded his men that there was more glory to be won by delaying an engagement until they could do battle with the main body of the enemy instead of the isolated garrison at Ferozepur.22 Had the Sikhs gone ahead and neutralized Littler’s force at Ferozepur, the outcome of not only the Battle of Ferozeshahr which followed but of the entire First Sikh War would have been entirely different.

  The Battle of Ferozeshahr is not easy to describe. Even with the help of betrayals, the British forces were shaken to the core by the punishment they received. Both sides of this coin, betrayal on one and a drubbing such as the British had not received in a long time on the other, are again described by Cunningham, one of the few objective historians of his time. Writing of the battle between the Sikhs and the British which began on 21 December he wrote that the confident English ‘had at last got the field they wanted … [but] the resistance met was wholly unexpected … Guns were dismounted, and their ammunition was blown into the air; squadrons were checked in mid career; battalion after battalion was hurled back with shattered ranks … the obstinacy of the contest threw the English into confusion; men of all regiments and arms were mixed together; generals were doubtful of the fact or of the extent of their own success, and colonels knew not what had become of the regiments they commanded or of the army of which they formed a part.’23

  Sir Hope Grant, a British general involved in the Anglo-Sikh Wars, writing of the same night, described it as ‘one of gloom and never perhaps in our annals of Indian warfare, has a British army on so large a scale been nearer to defeat which could have involved annihilation. The Sikhs had practically recovered the whole of their entrenched camp; our exhausted and decimated divisions bivouacked without mutual cohesion over a wide area.’24

  But the conduct of Tej Singh and Lal Singh had still to reach its nadir. At dawn on 22 December, as the Sikh and British forces once again took to the field of battle, Tej Singh also arrived with a well-rested reserve Sikh force, to the utter dismay of the enemy. ‘The wearied and famished English saw before them a desperate and, perhaps, useless struggle.’25 ‘The whole ground between Ferozeshahr and the latter place [Sultan-Khan-Wala] appeared, indeed, covered with men; some running, others looking behind them with terror depicted in their faces, the dread of the Sikhs at their heels almost depriving them of the power of motion.’26 But Tej Singh, ‘when the fate of India trembled in the balance’, refused to attack the dispirited and devastated British.27 The extent to which Tej Singh and Lal Singh – each driven by his own selfish agenda – went to ensure British victory and the defeat of the Sikh army is nowhere more graphically highlighted than by the events of 22 December at Ferozeshahr. Once again, had the two commanders who led the Sikh forces on that day been men of integrity the outcome of the momentous engagement on the final day of the Ferozeshahr battle would have been profoundly different – as might have been the future of India.

  Tej Singh bided his time that day until the British were able to regroup their scattered forces and did not move even when the Sikhs under Lal Singh’s ineffective leadership were being targeted by the British. His tactics were to skirmish and feint with the British forces instead of taking them head-on wherever they were at their weakest, because he wanted defeat, not victory, for his side. As General Sir Henry Havelock, a veteran of that battle, said later: ‘another such action … will shake the Empire’28 … ‘India has been saved by a miracle.’29 It was, more accurately, saved by two turncoats.

  But even if the British ‘won’ the day at Mudki and Ferozeshahr, their losses were unusually high. Among the senior British officers killed were Sir Robert Sale, quartermaster-general, Sir John McCaskill, divisional commander, Brigadier Bolton, head of the First Brigade of Sir Harry Smith’s division, Brigadier Wallace, staff officers Herries an
d Munro, Major George Broadfoot, political agent at Ludhiana, Major Somerset, military secretary to the governor-general and many others. The British prime minister, Sir Robert Peel, placed this war in perspective when he spoke in the House of Commons about the mournfully large losses of British officers and men in fighting with ‘the most warlike [men] in India’. He was handsome enough to acknowledge the valorous conduct and courage of the Sikh soldiers so badly led and betrayed. ‘We are astonished at the numbers, the power of concentration and the skill and courage of the enemy.’

  The Royal Army, the Fauj-i-khas, had covered themselves with glory at Ferozeshar, even British commentators being full of praise. Osborne noted that its troops could shoot ‘with greater precision and regularity, both volleys and file firing, than any other troops I ever saw’; and old soldiers from the Napoleonic Wars considered its fire to be ‘both better delivered and better aimed than that of Napoleon’s infantry’.30

  But it was the Sikh artillery, nearly doubled in strength since Ranjit Singh’s death, that inflicted most damage, its units carefully taking up fortified positions and waiting for the enemy to attack. Its precision and rapidity of fire were a great surprise to the British, who had consistently underrated the Sikh artillery. One English eyewitness recorded its superior rate of fire at Ferozeshahr: ‘the Sikhs fired their guns in the ratio of thrice to our twice, which multiplies most fearfully the battering power of artillery, and raises the calibre of a six- into a nine-pounder’.31 Another factor in the greater destructive power of the Sikh guns was that many of them were made of heavier metal than their British counterparts, a Sikh four-pounder, for instance, being the weight of a British six-pounder and able to use double charges of powder, grape and shot. After the battle it was found that the Sikhs had guns of many different calibres, firing up to 24-pound shot. Hardinge reported in his dispatches that the Sikh artillery was better equipped and manned than the British, possessing ‘much superior calibre to the British 9-pounder batteries’.32