Sikunder Burnes

by Craig Murray

  After Rupar, Burnes again was Wade’s guest at Ludhiana while he wrote up yet more reports. He produced a lengthy comparison of the Indus and Ganges. The Ganges was the main artery of British India, and by stressing to those who had never seen the Indus that it was even larger than the Ganges, Burnes hoped to increase the impact of his mission.6

  Bentinck, once sceptical, was now fulsome:

  The Governor-General […] desires me to convey to you, his high approbation of the manner in which you have acquitted yourself […] and his acknowledgement for the full and satisfactory details furnished […]

  In like manner His Lordship considers you to be entitled for commendation for the extent of geographical and general information collected in the voyage […] The map submitted by you forms an addition to the geography of India of the first utility and importance […]7

  The presents Burnes and Leckie had received had to be handed in to the Company. The Governor-General’s office wrote to Captain Robert, Acting Resident in Bhuj (Pottinger being in Haidarabad) that ‘considering the eminent success which has attended this interesting expedition, and which is attributable […] to the good conduct of those concerned, Government will be quite prepared to take into its favourable consideration the question of their suitable remuneration’.8 Unfortunately the remuneration was worth much less than the presents. Burnes was with Wade for Christmas, but on Boxing Day rather than receiving gifts he was giving them back. This is the packing list for the consignment to the Paymaster General:9

  (From Ranjit Singh)

  A sword ornamented with gold and pearls

  A sword ornamented with emeralds

  Two Cashmere carpets

  A bed and curtains of Cashmere shawls

  A bow and quiver of arrows

  A Dagger

  Two Heron’s Plumes

  A Matchlock with velvet pouch

  A bottle ornamented with silver

  A sword with gold mountings (from Nuseer Khan)

  A sword with gold mountings (from Roostum Khan)

  A sword with gold mountings (from Roostum’s brother)

  A Scindian Matchlock (From Bhawul Khan)

  Signed A Burnes Lodeana 26th December 1831

  The gold and jewel encrusted Damascus sword he received from Murad Ali Khan does not appear on the list of presents he handed in, nor the string of pearls from Ranjit. There may be an innocent explanation.

  Burnes was also told that, whereas he had drawn a bill for Rs20,000 to cover expenses, his receipts only amounted to Rs17,568. On top of which the government calculated he had made an exchange rate gain of a further Rs593. He was therefore asked to repay over Rs3,000, approximately £300. The days of fortune-making in British India were over.

  By the time the extra pay for his mission to Lahore was worked out, it was March 1832, and Burnes was in Afghanistan. The Governor-General granted an additional monthly allowance of Rs1,500 for nine months. That was a bonus of £1,350, which though not a fortune, was a good sum. Leckie received a meagre bonus of £225.10

  While waiting final permission from Bentinck to travel to Bokhara Alex paid a visit to Delhi, where he stayed with Charles Trevelyan and D’Arcy Todd, who shared a house. Todd found Burnes ‘a very intelligent and pleasant man’.11 Burnes paid a call on the Mughal Emperor amid the decaying splendour of the great Red Fort, and reflected: ‘The mummery of the ceremony was absurd, and I could not suppress a smile as the officers mouthed, in loud and sonorous solemnity, the titles of King of the World, the Ruler of the Earth, to a monarch now realmless, and a prince without the shadow of power.’12

  On 19 December Bentinck sent a long report to the Court of Directors, examining the policy consequences of Burnes’ Indus mission. He noted that Burnes had won the Amirs of Sind round, and they now had a genuine desire for good relations. Their fears of encroachment from the Sikhs were well-founded. If the British could restrain Ranjit Singh, influence in Sind would increase.

  Bentinck stressed that Burnes had shown that the Indus was essential to the military defence of India. Britain must therefore establish alliances with all the adjacent rulers. Burnes had reported a possible marriage alliance between the Talpur Dynasty of Sind, and Persia. Britain must head this off, and indeed prevent any external alliances of all Indus states. Finally, Bentinck noted that he had granted Burnes permission to continue his exploration to the Oxus, returning to his Residency via Persia. Bentinck praised Burnes’ professional abilities in the highest terms.13

  Henry Pottinger had proceeded to Haidarabad to negotiate the Indus treaty with the Amirs. With all his customary aggression he threatened both an attack on Sind by Ranjit Singh and a British punitive expedition because of Khosa raids. What the Amirs really wanted was a guarantee against Ranjit; Pottinger saw this as an opportunity to make Sind a British protectorate and control its foreign policy. But Bentinck turned these proposals down flat; his Rupar agreement with Ranjit Singh had stipulated both Sind and Punjab should be independent.

  On 4 April 1832 Pottinger signed a treaty with the Amir of Khairpur and on 20 April with the Amir of Haidarabad which opened the Indus to trade at a fixed rate of tolls and duties, but forbade the passage of arms and military supplies, and banned the British from living in Sind. Pottinger had failed to get agreement to British Residencies in Khairpur and Haidarabad. A separate treaty dealt with the suppression of raiders from Thar and Parkar. The following December Claude Wade agreed with Ranjit Singh a similar treaty to open the commercial navigation of the Indus and Sutlej. The British plan for the Indus had been achieved on paper. Pottinger remained Resident at Bhuj and non-resident Envoy to Sind.

  Wade also reached an agreement with the Nawab of Bhawalpur over his stretch of the Indus, including a British Resident at Mithankot. In February 1833 Lieutenant Mackeson was given the grand title of ‘Resident on the Indus’, and continued the never-ending task of surveying the river’s shifting bed, and attempting to make the various rulers respect their treaty obligations. In 1834 a further treaty with all the Indus rulers provided that the only tax would be a single toll per vessel to be collected by the British, and the revenue distributed by them between Haidarabad, Khairpur, Bhawalpur, Ranjit Singh and the Company.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Journey through Afghanistan

  Burnes wrote to his sister Anne in Bhuj, ‘The home government have got frightened at the designs of Russia, and desired that some intelligent officer should be sent to acquire information in the countries bordering on the Oxus and the Caspian; and I, knowing nothing of all this, come forward and volunteer for precisely what they want. Lord Bentinck jumps at it […]’1

  It was becoming standard to send a doctor with every small party, to try to reduce the appalling mortality rate. The Aberdonian Dr James Gerard of the Bengal Service had already explored the Himalayas more widely than any European, had experience of surveying, and was a natural choice.2 Mohammad Ali, who had done so much of the work on the Indus, stayed with Burnes.

  While Burnes and Charles Trevelyan got on well, they had different viewpoints. Trevelyan argued with evangelising zeal from his desk. With Thomas Babington Macaulay, Calcutta’s Legal Officer, he was at the core of a new Anglicising movement in British Indian administration. He published tracts on the advantages of English language education, and the superiority of Christianity. While achieving some good, such as Bentinck’s suppression of Thuggi and Sutti, this movement heralded a new arrogant cultural superiority, a creed from which Burnes largely appeared immune.

  Charles Grant, President of the Board of Control, had appointed Macaulay to the Supreme Council in Calcutta precisely to carry out Anglicising reform. Macaulay’s father Zachary had made his fortune in the EIC. There was a public alliance between Macaulay and Trevelyan – and a private closer one. Macaulay had an overwhelming attachment to his two sisters that was possibly incestuous. His letters to his elder sister Margaret are at least very strange, and one directly compares their love with Byron’s ‘troubles’ with his sist
er – and everyone knew what that meant. The younger sister Hannah had always been included in this emotional bond, and after Margaret married, Macaulay took Hannah with him to India. When Hannah got engaged to Trevelyan, Macaulay wrote to Margaret: ‘Since you left me, she was everything to me. I loved her, I adored her […] I am to be henceforth nothing to her.’ This is not a normal reaction to a sister getting engaged.3

  Trevelyan had not socialised much with British colleagues other than in field sports. He had no conversation other than work, and nothing in common with his wife. He ‘was indeed much perplexed by the conversation of his wife and her brother.’4 Extraordinarily, Trevelyan made it a condition of marrying Hannah that Macaulay move in with them – and they lived together in India and later London. Incest possibly continued: in 1839 Hannah wrote about her brother, ‘I cannot endure the thought that I will ever love him less than I do now, though I feel how criminal it is.’ The relationship was strange in every way. The joint household had already been going for three years when Burnes wrote to Masson that Trevelyan travelled with four (presumably Indian) wives.

  The new English College at Delhi was central to the reformers’ initiative, and Trevelyan was a Governor. He grandiloquently declared it ‘destined to change the moral aspect of the whole of Upper India’. Mohan Lal was a student in its first English medium class. Not the best scholar, but the most charming and active, Lal came from a high caste Kashmiri Pandit family, which had fallen on hard times after the Court of the Mughal Emperors declined. His father had switched his allegiance to the British and been Mountstuart Elphinstone’s munshi in his mission to Peshawar. Trevelyan became fond of Mohan. He had secured him a scholarship and sometimes helped further with money.5 In 1828 the religious authorities in Delhi outlawed the English class. Mohan Lal had assisted Trevelyan in resolution talks,6 and recorded that ‘he gave me a document in which he promised to promote my prosperity in the world’. On 18 December 1831, Burnes met the eighteen-year-old Lal in the home of the Residence Secretary Mr Fitzgerald, and was instantly won over. He applied for permission to appoint Lal as munshi to the expedition at an annual salary of Rs1,000.

  Lal later untruthfully stated that Mohammed Ali was the munshi and he a diplomat. In fact, Ali was assistant deputy surveyor, on a salary almost twice Lal’s.7 Burnes had left Delhi to return to Ludhiana as guest of Wade over Christmas, and there the small party made rendezvous, Mohan Lal the last to arrive by pony on 2 January. By the following nightfall they had reached the border of Ranjit Singh’s realm, where a cavalry escort awaited. Their route involved regular Sikh presents of bows, purses and too much food, with increasingly large escorts and entertainment by local sirdars. Just outside Lahore on 16 January 1832 they were met by General Allard and escorted into Lahore amidst a cloud of yellow robed cavalry. Ranjit Singh gave audience to Burnes and Gerard in a magnificent crimson pavilion, where they were seated on golden chairs on a velvet-covered dais. There followed a fortnight of Ranjit’s magnificent entertainment, including two boar hunts. One tent was completely encrusted in pearls, with a border of precious stones, and worth in itself several lakhs of rupees. Burnes noted that Ranjit cannily did not drink much, while pressing his guests. Ranjit and Alexander conversed for hours. Sohan Lal Suri recorded of Burnes and Gerard ‘the glorious sahibs indulged in drinking wine with the dancing girls and were lost in the ocean of intoxication’.8 Lal felt that Ranjit’s open familiarity with the dancing girls was ‘improper’.At their final night’s carousing with Ranjit the entertainment consisted of highly sexualised fighting between girls in which they tore at each other, and winners were richly rewarded.

  On 11 February they left Lahore, and adopted native dress. Young Mohan was astonished to see Burnes and Gerard in turbans, shifts, loose trousers and slippers, sitting cross-legged on the ground, eating rice with their fingers from a communal camp dish. On 7 March 1832 at Rawalpindi they stayed in a house of Shah Shuja, which Burnes described as a ‘miserable hovel’. Here they reduced their equipment much further to just two mule-loads, shaved their heads and assumed the appearance of poverty.

  Burnes was not only taking the advice of General Court but also of Mount-stuart Elphinstone: ‘In most parts of the country, a poor stranger would be received with hospitality and kindness; but a wealthy traveller […] might lay his account with being plundered.’9 They now went into full disguise, the first time Burnes had ever done this. He became ‘Sikunder Khan’ while Mohan Lal became ‘Hasan Jan’, an identity he kept for most of their subsequent journey. Burnes generally used disguise only on the road and abandoned it when dealing with local rulers.

  Having visited several centres of the salt-mining industry, which brought an annual revenue of 30 lakhs, they became the first Britons to be admitted to the great stronghold of Rotas. Burnes made a comprehensive plan of its defences and found it to be very strong, but with the obvious weakness of no internal supply of fresh water. It contained 400 houses, of which Mohan Lal claimed fifty were inhabited by dancing girls. On 9 March at Rawalpindi Gerard was struck down with a severe fever, probably malarial. He struggled on. Two days later at Magala, Burnes was able to talk about the route for two hours with a Hindu goldsmith recently returned from Bokhara.

  On 14 March they were entertained by the great Sikh General Hari Singh at Sirkika Bela on the Indus. Mohan Lal noted that Hari’s personal morality was on the same level as Ranjit’s. The next day they were forced to skirt Attock as Sikh regiments were in mutiny over pay arrears. Attempting to ford the Indus with their Sikh escort, three men were swept away and drowned. The party were therefore mounted on elephants, and even then the crossing was nerve-racking. On 19 March they stayed the night at Pirpai, where Syed Ahmed had been defeated and killed and his remaining supporters massacred. They were put up in a single, crowded hovel, but that evening noble envoys arrived from Peshawar and next morning they were conducted to the city, where they were greeted by the Sirdar, Sultan Mohammed Khan Barakzai, whom Burnes had met briefly at Lahore.

  In Chapter 2 we introduced the background of the feud between the Saduzais and the Barakzais. Dost Mohammed Khan Barakzai had raped a daughter of Shah Mahmoud Saduzai, the King of Afghanistan who had displaced Shah Shuja. Dost Mohammed’s act had repelled his own family; but when in retaliation Crown Prince Kamran Saduzai first blinded then tortured to death the vizier Futth Khan Barakzai, the Barakzais united in a vicious struggle.

  Over a decade of civil war ensued, until in 1825 Dost Mohammed had established himself as ruler in Kabul, while other Barakzai family members ruled in Kandahar, Jallalabad and Peshawar. The Saduzais clung on only in Herat.

  Both the Saduzais and Barakzais were members of the Dourani tribal confederacy. The Barakzais were a khail, or group of families, whereas the Saduzais were an ulus, or single family, within the Popalzai khail. The Saduzai ulus were the royal family, a status that the leading Mohammedzai ulus of the Barakzais did not claim.10 Dost Mohammed ruled in Kabul without the title of Shah. The Barakzais were the largest and most warlike of the Dourani khails, a major power base.

  There had never been a state with the borders of Afghanistan today. Afghanistan had been part of the wide Safavid and Mughal Empires; its manifestation as a single political unit is traced to the empire founded by Ahmed Shah Dourani from 1747. That also included Sind, Baluchistan, Peshawar and Kashmir. The nineteenth-century British concept of Afghanistan was more ethnically homogeneous than the modern state, in that it was based on the Pashtun homeland. Modern Afghanistan has little homogeneity; all its major ethnic groups have most of their population over the borders in Afghanistan’s neighbours.11 Current northern Afghanistan between the Hindu Kush and the Amu Darya, including Balkh and Mazar-i-Sharif, was not considered by the British in 1832 as part of Afghanistan, though Herat was. Afghanistan’s northern border was Bamian.

  The Afghans themselves seldom referred to Afghanistan at all. They knew the word and did have a concept of being Afghan, though this was much less important than tribal identity. Th
ey generally thought of Kabulistan, stretching from Bamian to Attock, and of Zabulistan or Khorasan, which included Kandahar and Herat.

  Afghanistan was a country of bitter feud. However it would be wrong to characterise the regions into which Burnes was venturing as uncivilised. In the Middle Ages it had outshone Europe in intellectual achievement. Despite decline, there still existed a high culture. Patterns of trade were well established. In Bokhara, Kunduz, Kabul or Shirkapur, Burnes could exchange for gold with local merchant banking networks promissory notes written in the British mission in Bhuj and redeemable in Bombay, at a premium that seldom varied from 6 per cent. That argues a high degree of sophistication, also found in other activities. Mountstuart Elphinstone noted that ‘The smallpox carries off many persons, though inoculation has long been practised by the Moollahs and Sayyids in the remote parts of the kingdom.’

  The British Residency at Delhi had, since 1809, maintained native agents in Kabul, Kunduz and Bokhara, who reported on political and commercial matters. Recent British travellers into Afghanistan included an adventurer named Durie, son of a Scottish father and Indian mother, who had travelled to Kabul and Kandahar in 1808–9 disguised as a pilgrim to Mecca. Durie lived entirely off hospitality, and though several times discovered as a Christian encountered no personal violence. The more celebrated travels of Moorcroft and Trebeck from 1820 to 1825 were epic and tragic, and underlined the risks that Burnes was taking.

  From February 1828 to April 1829 another Company civil servant, Edward Stirling from Port of Menteith, had travelled through Persia and the Uzbek lands beyond the Hindu Kush in full disguise as a Muslim merchant before returning via Kabul. He was suspended by the Company for eighteen months for returning three weeks late from leave.12 He bemoaned, ‘The members of Government could not be roused to take an interest in the subject. The knowledge I had been in these interesting countries produced no desire for intelligence regarding them.’13