by Craig Murray
Syad A village of 25 houses, 9 miles E of Jaysulmere, belonging to Jessore Rajpoot. It is built on the brow of a Rocky Hill, and as the houses are terrace roofed, it has at a distance the appearance of a fort. Water is to be had from pits dug in the bed of a tank.
Taitra A village of 100 houses now nearly deserted, the residence of a Bhattee chief 70 miles N.E. from Jaysulmere. Its chief like him of the neighbouring place of Barras. Indeed all the Bhattees are plundering characters. Taitra is about 12 miles S. of Pohura.
Tunmote A frontier and small strong fort about 100 miles N.W. of Jaysulmere. It is a subject of dispute between the Daoodpootras and the Rawul of Jaysulmere.48
The disappointment which Burnes and Holland felt at having to terminate their mission had to be subsumed in the major task of writing up the reports and preparing their maps. These were submitted to Malcolm under a secret dispatch of 6 July 183049 forwarded on by him to the Governor-General under a minute of 9 August,50 drafted by Burnes, who had joined Malcolm in Dupuri.
For letters to be exchanged with London at this time took a year. Burnes did not know it yet, but for the first time he was being noticed with approval at the EIC headquarters in Leadenhall Street, not for this mission, but for the map and memorandum of the Mouth of the Indus completed a year previously. On 10 March 1830 the Military Committee of the Court of Directors wrote to the Governor-General commending ‘the zeal and talents of Lieut. Burnes’.51
James and Alexander had meantime been in correspondence with their father on bringing out their two sisters, twenty-one-year-old Elizabeth and twenty-year-old Jane. Their eldest sister Anne remained in Montrose another year, to help her mother with the younger children.
James Burnes senior became worried as to whether the girls had made the passage safely. The Fortune had left the Clyde on 12 April 183052 for Bombay and on 25 April Jane had sent back a letter from the Scilly Isles, but no other letters had reached home from Mauritius, St Helena or the Cape. Perhaps the girls, having escaped that cramped Montrose home, were having too much fun to write. But their parents were distraught. Death from disease or shipwreck was a serious risk. James senior wrote:
all our feelings are absorbed in the overwhelming anxiety to hear of the safe arrival of our dear Elizabeth and Jane. We hoped that they would reach Bombay about the beginning or middle of August and as Alexander would be there […] we were hopeful that they would at once receive the countenance and protection of a brother […] Not a paper has once mentioned the Fortune [and] the suspense has become absolutely harassing – God send that in a few weeks we may know that they are both well and with you, and that Mrs B and you are both pleased with them.53
In fact by the time he wrote the girls had been for two months the toast of the Bhuj garrison, the Fortune having arrived in Bombay on 21 August after an uneventful passage. Elizabeth was married at Bombay Cathedral to Captain Richard Whish within six months of stepping on the dock.
In Montrose, the account of James’ mission to Haidarabad was being prepared for publication by his father, who had engaged Dr Browne, former editor of the Caledonian Mercury, to see it through the press. James was self-publishing and 500 copies would cost ‘considerably more than 120 pounds’, a substantial sum. Two hundred copies were to go to James in India, and the rest they would try to sell in the UK as ‘I hope to establish your reputation as a literary man’.54
The small-town squabbles of Montrose must have seemed a world away to James junior as he read his father’s letter in the heat and dust of Bhuj:
Cap. Leighton arrived here a few days after your packet and sent down his [visiting card] on the 18th. He called on the 19th […] Mrs Leighton tho’ here did not call. She did not call at all the last time she was here, tho’ your mother and sister called on her. This is very vexing to us, but we cannot counteract that low and desperate jealousy on the part of the Leightons here […]
The other news was that their brother David, having qualified in medicine, had on 2 November 1831 been appointed a ship’s surgeon on the frigate HMS Undaunted, while Adam was joining the family law firm. James senior’s long letter was posted at Montrose on 18 November 1830 addressed to ‘Dr James Burnes, the Residence, Bhooj, Cutch via Forbes and Company, Bombay’. It was stamped in London on 1 December 1830 and is marked as received at Bhuj 24 June 1831.
Forbes and Co. were the Burnes’ agents in Bombay. They acted as bankers; receiving and holding salaries and honouring bills. They were also postal and shipping agents and suppliers, bringing in foods, wines and other goods against specific orders from a catalogue. Remarkably the company still exists in Mumbai. I called on them, but they denied any knowledge of company archives.
James senior’s letter was posted as a single sheet – that is to say one piece of paper, folded and sealed with wax, with no envelope. This was the cheapest way to send. As there was a great deal to say, not only was every margin written over, but after a side was completed, it was turned ninety degrees and then completely overwritten. You must read it first from one angle then the other, but the tangle of crossed handwriting is difficult to decipher. Perhaps money was still tight in Montrose.
CHAPTER SIX
The Indus Scheme
Burnes was delighted to learn from Malcolm that their enthusiasm for exploration of the north-west frontier was shared in London by the President of the Board of Control, Lord Ellenborough. The President was a cabinet minister heading the government appointed Board, established in 1784 to control the EIC in its territorial administration and foreign policy. Burnes had been prevented by Bentinck from sailing down the Indus, but Ellenborough had responded to minutes from Malcolm and Pottinger by writing to Bentinck to request a mission of exploration up the Indus, to the banks of which no British territory yet reached.
Burnes had submitted a prospectus for precisely this mission, dated 30 June 1830, setting out possible routes and the political arrangements to be made with rulers.1 He suggested that the suppression of cross-frontier brigandage should again be the cover story, plus concern at recent Sikh incursions to the South. Burnes suggested that the Amirs of Sind should be informed of this mission late, making interception difficult. Pottinger forwarded this plan to Malcolm on 30 July 1830. Malcolm suggested that it would be best to avoid Umarkot, as just too dangerous, while ‘I do not find myself quite as sanguine as Lieutenant Burnes appears to be […] but there is nothing glaringly impossible’.
Pottinger noted that Burnes’ mission to Parkar had actually succeeded in stopping the brigandage there, and believed that could be the excuse for sending him further afield. Pottinger thought the most important part of the Indus survey was from Uch to Haidarabad and that Burnes was likely to be prevented from proceeding down river from Haidarabad. His alternative:
dispatching some very bulky Present (a Carriage for instance) which could not be transported on Camels, to the Ameers, or requesting their Highnesses sanction to forwarding through their country a similar token of friendship to Runjeet Sing and stating why it must be transmitted by Boat. One or two officers qualified for collecting the desired information would in either case naturally proceed in Charge of the Present […]2
This was the origin of perhaps the most famous of all spying ruses.
Malcolm needed to get the plan past the very significant obstacle of Lord Bentinck. In his minute of 9 August Malcolm queried the cancellation of Burnes’ recent expedition:
no bad impressions were made or jealousy excited, and from the information given me by Lieut. Burnes […] he would have come down the Indus and ascertained all the objects we are so desirous to know with little or no trouble […]
He then addressed head on the turf war with Bengal:
The qualifications of Lieut Burnes […] may be equalled or perhaps surpassed by many officers of the Quarter Master General’s Department in Bengal, who would, no doubt, be forward to explore provinces where Lieut Burnes went […] from these provinces being subject to the Bengal Presidency […] but [Burnes] had been
appointed and done duty as an assistant in the Political department in Cutch. This gave him an introduction and influence in the countries he traversed […] which, added to his former acquaintance with many of the inhabitants and his temper and habits and unimpaired health, enabled him to make a progress which would have been difficult for an individual without similar advantages […]
Lieut Burnes passing through part of the territories of Joodpoor and Jaysulmere was necessary for the completion of other more important parts of his survey. He was authorised to proceed as he did by me without the most distant idea on my part of any usurpation of authority.3
This turf battle was a major obstacle to getting Bentinck to agree that Alexander should lead the exploration of the Indus ordered by Ellenborough.
I know from professional experience that carving out and defending their personal area of influence is a chief motivator of ambitious civil servants. This is a central point – M E Yapp argues that the pushing of projects of border expansion by officers who gained personal career advancement was the prime driver of the Great Game. Yapp describes Malcolm as ‘a skilful and merciless intriguer, ready to grasp at any prospect of advance’.4 On Yapp’s reading, Malcolm sending Burnes into Bengal’s sphere of influence was an internal British power play that led on to major territorial acquisitions.
Malcolm justified his choice: ‘Having had my attention much directed […] during these thirty years to the exploring and surveying of countries in Asia […] I have gained some experience in the qualities and habits of the individuals by whom such enterprises can be undertaken and of the pretexts and appearances necessary to give them success’5 and noted that in 1828 and 1829 he had delayed the exploration until Burnes became available.
London was enthusiastic. This mood had been bolstered from an unlikely direction. The fiery Irishman Colonel George de Lacey Evans was a real fighting soldier and had been at Waterloo. He had entered Parliament and become known as an advanced radical, advocating universal suffrage and the right of workers to combine. He was even heard to wonder why women might not vote, which led Palmerston to conclude he was mad.
Evans drew popular attention to the rapid expansion of the Russian Empire, and argued that it posed a threat to British India. In his books On the Designs of Russia (1828) and On the Practicability of the Russian Invasion of India (1829) he argued that Russian armies could advance to India in just two years. He projected Russia’s principal line of advance as from the Caspian to Khiva and then by the Oxus to Balkh and across the Hindu Kush to Kabul, thence through the Khyber pass to Peshawar.
Events seemed to bear Evans out. The Treaty of Turkmenchai in 1828 had consolidated Russia’s position across the Caucasus, making deep inroads into Persia’s Caspian territories and seizing important military positions. Then, in the year between Evans’ two books, Russia had taken the key fortresses of Varna, Kars and Erzurum and the city of Adrianople from the Turks.6 In the period 1828–30 Russian territorial gains throughout Eurasia were larger than France and England combined.
Evans made the crucial point that a Russian threat to India was potent, not because of the strength of the Russian army, but because of the disaffection of the Indian people themselves with British rule. He argued that it was therefore essential that no potential threat was allowed near India as ‘the defence of dependencies held by the sword rather than the affection of its inhabitants, can only be advantageously made in advance of their frontiers’.7
He called for the establishment of a British Agent at Kabul, which state could be a buffer against Russia; he also advocated a commercial consulate at Bokhara, and a thorough survey of the routes from Peshawar to Khiva.8 In short, Evans plots out Alexander’s future career. His books crystallised the thinking of the ruling establishment on the strategic defence of British India, and Burnes was to be a key player in advancing their aims.
Evans was read by everyone who mattered. The Duke of Wellington was Prime Minister. Evans, despite his radical politics, was one of the few politicians the Iron Duke did not actively despise. Wellington viewed the advance of Russian armies on India as impracticable, but was alive to the dangers of Russian advances stirring up latent disaffection there. Wellington was a friend of Malcolm, who had served alongside him in the Mahratta Wars and resided with him in Paris after Waterloo. From Persia, the British Ambassador MacDonald reported with alarm proposals for a joint expedition with 20,000 Russian ‘auxiliaries’ to invade the Turkmen lands and Khiva to counteract slave raids.9
Lord Ellenborough shared Evans’ views. Ellenborough was a strange character, whose personal identification with the anti-Russian cause was not quite healthy. When Russia took the Turkish fortress of Erzurum, he wrote: ‘Every success of theirs in that quarter makes my heart bleed. I consider it a victory over me, as Asia is mine.’10 He recorded his dream of commanding a British army in battle against the Russians on the banks of the Indus. He had been inspired by James Burnes’ book on Sind, and written of it ‘no British flag has ever floated upon the waters of this river! Please God it shall, and in triumph, to the source of all its tributary streams’.11
In fact, there had once been significant British connection with the Indus. Bornford and Wilde had sailed down from Lahore to the sea in 1638.12 Company factories had been established on the Indus from 1639 to 1662, and local commodities proved profitable exports. In 1727 Capt. Alexander Hamilton described the Indus as ‘navigable as far as Kashmir’. The British tried again with a factory at Thatta in 1758–75 but had been expelled by the rulers of Sind.13
Wellington himself now authorised the British push to explore Central Asia. Ellenborough recorded:
The Duke then said we must look not to India only, but to all Asia, and asked me if I had read Evans’ book. I told him I had; that forty-eight hours after I had read it I sent a copy to Malcolm and to Macdonald. I told him all the views I had with regard to the navigation of the Indus and the opening of a trade with Cabul and Bokhara. He said our minds appeared to have been travelling the same way.14
The Secret Committee of the EIC obliged. Britain could oust Russian influence from Central Asia through trade domination. On 12 January 1830 the Secretary of the Secret Committee drafted clear guidance for the Governor-General:
if the produce of England and of India could be sent at once up the Indus to such points as might be convenient for their transport to Cabul […] we might succeed in underselling the Russians and in obtaining for ourselves a large portion at least of the internal trade of Central Asia […] direct your attention with a view to the Political effects […]15
The Board of Control also set out for Bentinck six subjects about which it wanted information.
The tonnage of vessels in the ports on the Caspian, the size of the Russian navy there and the volume of Caspian trade with Russia
The route and time taken by caravans from Orenburg to Bokhara, the size of caravans and the number each year, the terrain covered
Details of Russian settlements on the East Coast of the Caspian
Details of Russian Moves towards the Aral Sea
The military and political state of Khiva, Bokhara and Kokand
Annual returns of the trade of Central Asia16
This letter was sent to Bentinck and Malcolm. This request is essential background to Burnes’ journey up the Indus. Even before Burnes left Bhuj, the requirement was always there to survey to Kabul, Bokhara and the Caspian. And his route after Bokhara was key: through Khivan territory and disputed Khorasan and right on to the eastern shore of the Caspian and the Russian sphere; then return to India via Tehran. It is plain that Burnes was systematically meeting the precise requirements of the Board of Control.
Forced by Wellington to this policy, Bentinck now abdicated responsibility and passed the buck to Malcolm. There was already bad blood between Bentinck and Malcolm, who had accepted the post of Governor of Bombay on an understanding that his area of control would be extended over Central India; he was furious with Bentinck for blocki
ng this. The Governor-General now preferred to avoid tempering Malcolm’s ambition on the north-west frontier.
Another Company civil servant, Edward Stirling, had just become one of the first Europeans since Alexander to cross over the high passes through the Hindu Kush. Stirling fell victim in Calcutta to the disapproval of such adventures by Bentinck. He was however sent from London a list of questions about his journey, most of which are precisely the same as those given Burnes.17 There was therefore a systematic basis to these inquiries.
Ellenborough suggested, at the instigation of Henry Ellis, Chairman of the Court of Directors, that a pretext for the mission might be to send two English dray horses to Ranjit Singh, who was inordinately fond of collecting bloodstock. Malcolm varied this improbable cover story for a spying mission:
it would perhaps be still better to send […] a large carriage which, from the size of the package, could obviously not be conveyed by land. This might be shipped with a letter to the Ameers of Sinde, requesting they would assist in forwarding the present which the English government had sent to Runjeet Singh, and the dray horses, if they came in time, might accompany it.
I should desire, if this is approved, to send Lieut. Burnes in charge, writing to the Ameers that he had been selected […] to concert measures against any future excesses of the Khosas and to find out any bands in the Tharr.
It would be advisable, if this plan is adopted, that it be kept perfectly secret […]
Malcolm argued, ‘I confess I shall be confident of any plan he undertakes […] and provided a latitude is given to him to act as circumstances may dictate, I dare pledge myself that the public interest is promoted.’ Burnes justified and needed a free rein. But Malcolm had another reason for selecting Burnes – he was cheap!