Imagining Lahore

  The congregation dispersed at the conclusion of prayers and headed to the langar hall. On the way I got hold of Amanpreet Singh, a thirty-five-year-old trader from Ludhiana, who had travelled to Pakistan for the first time. ‘The maharaja was a great leader. People were happy during his time. There was justice, education, wealth and prosperity. There was no crime. People would leave their shops unattended as there was no concept of stealing,’ he told me.

  Ranjit Singh was a truly remarkable ruler. Politically astute, he would use diplomacy to expand his empire wherever military action could be avoided. Setting up a system of patronage and alliance, along with military conquests, he was in a short period of time able to conquer the entire region of Punjab as well as parts of Afghanistan, Bahawalpur, Multan and Kashmir.

  His dream of a pan-Punjabi empire that also brought parts of East Punjab into its orbit could not be achieved due to the presence of the British on the eastern front, who quickly took the independent Sikh fiefs of eastern Punjab under their protection and forbade Ranjit Singh from expanding beyond the Sutlej. For a while Ranjit Singh contemplated defiance, but the memories of the humbled Marathas were too recent to ignore and so, in 1809, he signed the Treaty of Amritsar with the British. It promised perpetual friendship and an acknowledgement of Ranjit Singh’s sovereignty over his kingdom.

  With the east beyond his reach, Ranjit Singh eyed Sindh in the south. Given his military superiority, there was no doubt he would have been successful, but once again the British swooped in and prohibited him from doing so. Many historians believe that without the constraints of the British, Ranjit Singh would have reached Calcutta in the east and Mysore in the south, making himself the supreme ruler of the entire Indian peninsula.51

  Barred from expanding eastwards or southwards, Ranjit Singh turned to the west, the land of the Afghans. It is this westward expansion of the Khalsa Empire that is allotted much symbolic significance in Punjabi historiography.

  With the weakening of the hold of the Mughal Empire in the eighteenth century, Punjab was up for grabs. Afghan rulers, one after another, beginning with Nadir Shah and ending with Ahmad Shah Abdali, eyed the fertile land across the Indus with envy. Raids were launched into the province, causing havoc. Small Sikh misls or groups sprang up in different parts of the province, playing the role of scavengers in the wake of these raids.

  Towards the late eighteenth century, two of the twelve misls emerged as the most powerful—Sukerchakia (founded by Ranjit Singh’s grandfather that controlled territory around Gujranwala) and Kanhaiya (which included parts of Kasur, Gurdaspur and Amritsar). A political alliance was forged between these groups when Ranjit Singh, the boy-scion of the Sukerchakia misl, was betrothed to Mehtab Kaur, daughter of the chief of the Kanhaiya misl.

  With the merger of these two misls, Ranjit Singh, under the guidance of his mother-in-law, Sada Kaur, chief of the Kanhaiya misl after the death of her husband and father-in-law, found himself at the head of the most powerful Sikh army in all of Punjab. With the backing of the Kanhaiya misl, Ranjit Singh had every reason to believe he could achieve his goal of the first Sikh Empire. He wanted to be like the mighty Mughals. But before he could acquire an empire, he needed a capital.

  Lahore, by the end of the eighteenth century, was far from the city of gardens the Mughals had fashioned. It was a city in decline, a city of relics, a city of nostalgia. A sense of lost glory lingered in its air through the remnants of its monuments, most of them occupied by squatters. It was no longer the economic or cultural hub it had been at the time of the Mughals but it was still Lahore, the eternal political capital of Punjab, a city that could, unlike any other, transform Ranjit Singh from the chief of a misl into a maharaja overnight.

  While its walls are gone, the gateway still remains. At a distance of about 4 kilometres from the walled city of Lahore, close to the famed Laxmi Chowk, the name of the locality ‘Qila Gujjar Singh’ still keeps alive the memory of one of the three Sikh rulers of Lahore before Ranjit Singh. All of them belonged to the Bhangi misl which was once a powerful group with its centre at Amritsar, but had lost much of its might due to a prolonged power struggle with the Sukerchakia misl.

  The walled city and Lahore Fort fell under the sway of Lehna Singh who was for official purposes recognized as the governor of Lahore, ruling on behalf of the Afghan king Ahmad Shah Abdali, but in practice exercising free reign. After the conquest of Lahore, he was incorporated into the court of Ranjit Singh, where he was able to distinguish himself.

  Suba Singh, the third of the triumvirate rulers of Lahore, controlled parts of southern Lahore with his base at Nawan Kot, while Gujjar Singh controlled this part of the city, where he constructed a fort in a jungle and invited people to inhabit the region.

  Ranjit Singh marched into the city in the year 1799 without opposition. With Lahore under his control, his reputation soared. He could no longer be dismissed as a chief of a misl. He was a king on the rise, a future maharaja of an empire.

  Soon after, Ranjit Singh was able to capture Amritsar, the last bastion of the Bhangi misl. While Lahore enhanced his political reputation, it was the capture of Amritsar that added the mystery of religious zeal to his mission. Crowned maharaja, Ranjit Singh was not the king of any earthly empire but of the Khalsa Empire, the culmination of the efforts of the Gurus. It was the completion of Guru Nanak’s mission which had been taken forward by all the other Gurus; the reason that the Gurus had sacrificed their lives and those of their children. This is what Guru Gobind Singh had envisioned, a dream that had been fulfilled by Ranjit Singh.

  Coins in the new empire did not bear the name of the maharaja but of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism. The government was called the Khalsa Durbar and the army was the Khalsa army. Sikh and Hindu rituals played a prominent role at the Durbar.52 Historic Sikh gurdwaras commemorating events from the lives of the Gurus were renovated and expanded. Vast tracts of lands were affixed to these religious institutions making them financially independent. A minority that, until a few decades ago, had been brutally persecuted by the proxies of the Mughal and Afghan kings was now the master of a nascent empire.

  While Ranjit Singh positioned himself as the maharaja, his Khalsa Empire was far from a theological kingdom. Many Muslims were appointed to important positions in the Durbar and the army. His chief physician, who also assisted him in dealing with the British, was a Muslim, Fakir Azizuddin Bokhari. His descendants still reside in Lahore and take immense pride in the role their ancestors played in the Khalsa Durbar. Muhammad Sultan, Elahi Baksh and Ghaus Muhammad Khan were some of the prominent generals in his army. The kotwal or chief police officer of his capital was a Muslim called Imam Baksh.53

  Persian remained the official language of the court, while separate courts were reserved for Muslim subjects where jurists decided on their matters in accordance with Islamic law. Unani or Greek medicine, which had been popularised by Muslims in South Asia, was distributed free of cost, while Quranic and Arabic language schools continued to function throughout his empire.54

  Even so, Maharaja Ranjit Singh is popularly recalled in Pakistan today as a Sikh tyrant who desecrated Muslim buildings. There is some truth to this. The expansive courtyard of Badshahi Mosque, the grandest mosque in the city, was converted into a stable for army horses, while its rooms were used as depots for guns and ammunition. Ranjit Singh is said to have spent a night with his favourite consort, Moran Sarkar, who happened to be Muslim, in the minaret of the splendid Wazir Khan Mosque, another prominent mosque in the city constructed during the tenure of Shah Jahan.55 The azan was also banned during his rule for the inconvenience it caused the empire’s non-Muslim subjects.

  Several Mughal-era gardens, buildings and mausoleums were taken over by members of the Sikh aristocracy and other courtiers. Even the iconic mausoleum of Jahangir, on the western edge of River Ravi was not spared. The entire structure was removed and shifted to a small space between Lahore Fort and Badshahi Mosque, and a garden was raised around it. This cam
e to be known as Hazuri Bagh, where the maharaja would occasionally grant an audience to his subjects.

  Whereas most of these stories are recalled to show the atrocities and injustices committed by the maharaja against his Muslim subjects, stories of the maharaja or members of his family patronizing Muslim establishments are often ignored, perhaps deliberately, because they do not fit a simplistic narrative. Just behind Wazir Khan Mosque is another Mughal-era mosque, which had been converted into a gurdwara. Upon the intercession of the Fakir brothers, and on the orders of the maharaja, the mosque was renovated and opened for Muslims.56 A library was constructed at the shrine of Data Darbar on the orders of his wife, Jind Kaur, to which she donated the royal collection of handwritten copies of the Quran, adding to the shrine’s stature.57

  With the weakening of the Afghan Empire and the internecine war, Ranjit Singh turned his attention westwards. For centuries, Punjab and other parts of north India had borne the brunt of invasions from the west. The Mongols, Mughals and Afghans had entered India via Afghanistan. Ranjit Singh seemed to turn the tide of invasion. This was the first time that a Punjabi ruler was heading westward.

  Peshawar, one of the oldest cities in South Asia and the summer capital of the Afghan Empire, oscillated between the Afghans and the Khalsa Empire for several years before it was finally secured in 1834.58 The boundaries of the Khalsa Empire would have extended even farther west but for British interference. They wanted to secure the Afghan throne for Shah Shuja, their puppet ruler, and for that they needed Ranjit Singh to forgo his ambition.

  Peshawar and other areas around it, which had been incorporated into the Khalsa Empire despite the resentment of the Afghans, remained a part of it and were later bequeathed to the British. Peshawar and other parts of modern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa became part of Pakistan after Partition; however, even after the creation of the country, it remained a bone of contention between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Afghanistan claimed it as part of its territory which had been forcefully taken away. The boundaries of British India and subsequently Pakistan would have ended at the Indus had it not been for the eastward expansion of Maharaja Ranjit Singh.

  7

  THE MUGHAL CAPITAL

  With its tall minarets made of sandstone brought from Jaipur, and its bright white dome, Badshahi Masjid in Lahore is an inextricable aspect of the identity of the city. Just outside the mosque is the grave of the national poet, Allama Iqbal, the man identified as the ideological father of Pakistan. Facing the mosque is Hazuri Bagh, with its pavilion extracted from Jahangir’s mausoleum. Behind the Bagh is the Alamgiri Gate of Lahore Fort, named after Aurangzeb, with a flag of Pakistan fluttering atop. Also in the vicinity is Roshani Darwaza, one of the twelve gateways to the walled city of Lahore. At night, lamps were used to light the way from the gate of the fort to the Roshani Darwaza as the nobility of the Mughal court returned to their havelis in the walled city after a day at the court. Hence the name ‘Roshani’—light.

  Before the construction of Faisal Mosque in Islamabad, Badshahi Masjid had the honour of being the largest mosque in the country. Usually teeming with tourists, Pakistan’s most famous mosque comes to life on the occasion of Friday prayers and during Eid, when thousands of devotees gather in its vast courtyard to offer prayers. Next to its boundary wall is the recently introduced Food Street, where rooftop restaurants vie to provide the best view of the mosque, illuminated by floodlights at night, with some of the light also falling on the white dome of the smadh of Maharaja Ranjit Singh behind it.

  At the entrance of the mosque are some pictures from the colonial era. They show the mosque’s dilapidated condition after having served as a horse stable during the Sikh era. Sher Singh is rumoured to have used the tall minarets of the mosque to bombard the thick walls of the fort in an attempt to wrest control from the regent Chand Kaur, wife of Maharaja Kharak Singh.

  The pictures narrate the story of the mosque, of the benevolence of the ‘just and fair’ colonial empire that returned its control to the rightful inheritors—the Muslims of the city. It narrates the story of colonial historiography, the categorization of history into Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and British eras, pitting epochs, communities, religions and histories against one other, and in the process creating new classifications that might not have been there at the start. History used as a political tool, an excuse, a justification for the imposition of colonial rule. The British were needed to rescue the Muslims from the Sikhs, the Hindus from the Muslims, the Dravidians from the Aryans, the Dalits from the Brahmins, the past from the present.

  The narrative continues to unfold even today, throughout South Asia, as modern sensibilities are imposed on historical characters making heroes out of them, of imagined communities. The Mughal rule, for example, in this narrative became a symbol of the oppressive Muslim ‘colonialism’ of India, as foreign to the Indian subcontinent as British rule, while figures such as Chhatrapati Shivaji were representative of Hindu indigenous resistance. Just like the British, everything Muslim was deemed ‘foreign’, alien to the Indian subcontinent, a coercive historical anomaly that ruptured the Indian, read Hindu, civilization. In this narrative there was room for Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs within the fold of Hindu nationalism, but not for the Muslims, the successors of foreign occupation.

  At the other end of the spectrum, the Muslims too looked back to a ‘glorious’ past when this infidel land was ruled by one true force. This imagined memory became the basis of laying down future plans, with one group determined to uproot all vestiges of foreign influence, and the other wanting to take inspiration from the past to reclaim lost glory. The British, in the meantime, were more than eager to perpetuate this communalization of history for it provided them with a justification to govern as arbitrators, as correctors of historical injustices.

  In this communalization of history, Emperor Aurangzeb (1618–1707) bears the dubious distinction of being blamed for the downfall of the mighty Mughal Empire due to his intolerance, a product of his puritanical interpretation of religion. It is believed that during his long rule, which saw the expansion of the Mughal Empire to its zenith, Aurangzeb isolated several of his key Hindu allies because of his religious policies. Ever since the time of Emperor Akbar, jizya, a tax levied on non-Muslim subjects in a Muslim Empire for their protection, stood abolished. It was reintroduced by Aurangzeb, adding to the grievances of his Hindu subjects, including his Rajput allies, whose support to the Mughal throne had been crucial to its stability throughout Mughal history. Also, Aurangzeb’s protracted campaign in the Deccan was perceived as his vainglorious attempt to expand his autocratic rule, which put such a burden on the state that it quickly unravelled after his death.

  As evidence of Aurangzeb’s intolerance, it is argued that he demolished several Hindu temples. Sikh history notes how he ordered the assassination of the ninth Sikh Guru, Tegh Bahadur, for his sympathy to the Kashmiri Brahmins. The Mughal-Sikh conflict continued with Guru Tegh Bahadur’s son, Guru Gobind Singh, who waged several battles with the powerful Mughal army. The staunchest opposition to Aurangzeb came from the Marathas in the south, under the leadership of Shivaji.

  Aurangzeb’s treatment of his father and brothers is also depicted as a testimony of his cruelty. After usurping the throne from his father, Shah Jahan, Aurangzeb is believed to have imprisoned him in Agra, where he was rumoured to have been deprived of luxuries he had grown accustomed to, including music. It is cited that since Aurangzeb adhered to a puritanical interpretation of Islam, he was of the belief that music was not allowed, and had it banned throughout the empire. A much-narrated popular story has it that traditional musicians who had been part of the profession for generations were rendered unemployed and took out a funeral procession of their musical instruments. When Aurangzeb heard of it, he reportedly ordered that the instruments should be buried so deep that they may never be heard again.

  The third of four brothers, Aurangzeb is accused of having had all his brothers murdered. He is also alleged to have s
ent his captive father the decapitated head of his eldest brother, Dara Shikoh, Shah Jahan’s favourite son. Thus having forcefully snatched the crown from his father and his brother who had been appointed crown prince, Aurangzeb, in popular history, is depicted as a usurper who had no right to be at the head of the Mughal Empire. The subsequent weakening of the empire is presented as proof of his unsuitability for the throne.

  Just a little more than thirty years after his death, Delhi, the Mughal capital and the symbol of its authority, was ransacked by the Persian army of Nadir Shah. Between 1707 and 1719, the Mughal Empire had lost most of its vitality after a series of weak emperors, wars of succession and machinations of members of the nobility. Aurangzeb was the last effective emperor of the Mughal Empire.

  In the Pakistani narrative, Aurangzeb is presented as a hero who fought and expanded the frontiers of the Islamic empire. He is depicted as a pious Muslim who reintroduced Islamic laws by banning music and levying jizya. While Akbar in the Indian discourse is depicted as a tolerant ruler who treated his Hindu subjects with respect, encouraged interfaith dialogue and also abolished jizya, in the Pakistani narrative, he is viewed with scepticism because of his experiments with different religious philosophies and his attempt to forge a religion of his own, Din-i-Ilahi, which is considered a human’s attempt to intervene with the word of God.

  In contrast, Aurangzeb is imagined to be a true believer who removed corrupt practices from religion and the court, and once again purified the empire. The Indian narrative abhors him for the same reason, for abandoning the syncretic, and even politically expedient, practices of his predecessors in favour of a more puritanical interpretation of Islam, eventually resulting in the disintegration of the empire.