Sikunder Burnes

by Craig Murray

  He befriended the Lohani brothers, who as traders already knew about British India. Sarwar Khan had united the disparate Lohani groupings under his leadership. He could reputedly bring 20,000 cavalry into the field, and though he shunned war he had his own cannon foundry, as well as a zenana of 200 wives and concubines. His extensive lands lay across the main Lohani migration route into India, and he collected transit duties from his own people.

  The party had given some quinine to the Kush-Begi, who among his many duties was the Emir’s physician. This helped gain permission to depart and they left Bokhara on 21 July, not without relief, heading north-west. Their caravan halted at Mirabad, because of news that the Khan of Khiva and his army at Merv were out despoiling any passing caravan. They also heard rumours that the Emir of Bokhara, having discovered they were spies, was sending men to kill them. They were stuck nearly a month in a hamlet of just twenty houses, but made good friends with the local Turkmen.

  On 14 August they received letters and newspapers forwarded by Allard, their first contact with India for months. A Russian Embassy was apparently approaching Bokhara. On 17 August their caravan recrossed the Oxus on the ferry at Betik. Their route to Merv and Meshed now led through fierce desert of high dunes of soft sand, through which even camels’ splayed feet could plunge up to the knee. At Khaju on the banks of the river Murghab they met the camp of the Khan of Khiva. The senior merchants went to do obeisance: The caravan was charged the sharia fortieth, and Burnes and Gerard survived yet another inspection by officials, this time passing as Hindus. All counted themselves very fortunate the caravan had not been seized.

  Since the Hindu Kush they had frequently encountered the slave trade, from victims in chains stumbling along behind caravans, to market places with slave-pens. On 21 August in the Kara Kum desert they came across seven weeping Persian boys in iron neck collars, pulled behind the horses of Turkmen slavers. Their bare feet were blistered from the very hot sand. Burnes gave them a melon, which was all he could do. At the oasis of Sarakhs they entered a Turkmen encampment of 3,000 tents. Besides the Turkmen there were fifty Jews, 1,500 male Persian slaves and 1,000 slave girls, who were used casually for sex. Whilst there, Burnes witnessed a particularly beautiful girl sold to a merchant for seventy-seven gold tillas. ‘She had changed her character from slave to wife’ Burnes noted, indicating ironically that she had more freedom as a slave. Burnes’ pony was stolen: ‘The sturdy little creature had followed me from Pune […] had borne me in many a weary journey, and I cannot tell how much it vexed me […]’11 He was shocked one morning to find a huge camel spider, bigger than his hand and with mandibles like the claws of a scorpion, clinging to his leg, but managed to strike it off with his inkwell without being bitten.

  Burnes found a nobility in the Turkmen hospitality, and was surprised by the kindness shown him by these notorious plunderers. But their commitment to raiding the Persians was inveterate; one Turkmen quoted him a poem:

  The Kuzzilbashes have ten towers,

  In each tower there is only a Georgian slave,

  Let us attack them.12

  The caravan proceeded through these lawless regions in constant fear of attack by Turkmen or Alaman raiders. It was with relief that on 14 September 1832 they reached the Persian city of Meshed. Here they were entertained by the beautiful Armenian wife of Captain Shee of the British army, who was campaigning with the Crown Prince Abbas Mirza. After a week of recuperation, ditching their vermin-ridden robes, they joined the Crown Prince’s camp at Qochan. There Alex enjoyed the company of Colonel Borowski, a Polish Jewish adventurer in the service of Abbas Mirza. He had just taken the fort of Qochan after a hard battle, in which Russian and Polish troops had been prominent and formed the new garrison. Burnes met the Wazir of Herat, Yar Mahommed, who was both trying to avert the Crown Prince’s ambition towards his own city state, whilst seeking to ensure his own position should Persia take it.

  Burnes had still not completed the tasks set by the Secret Committee. He needed to reconnoitre the Russian presence on the Caspian Sea and possible routes of advance for a Russian army from its eastern shores. Gerard still had malaria, and could scarcely ride. Leaving Mohan Lal to take care of Gerard at Qochan on 29 September, Burnes accompanied by Mohammed Ali and his valet Ghulam Ali, struck out north-west for the Caspian. Alex parted from Mohan with a joking ‘Adieu, Mohan Lal, and take care of your head’, but the munshi was shocked, as Burnes had not warned him they were splitting.

  Burnes had a safe conduct from the Crown Prince in his pocket, and was travelling with the regional Governor and an escort of 300. He had however returned to Muslim disguise, with long beard and shaven head, quite comfortable in this identity. The escort was not under his command, and Burnes was unable to prevent them looting and raping in every settlement they passed.

  Eventually Burnes was able to leave his escort and proceed to Astrabad, but remained outside the town because of plague. He reached the Caspian after travelling through the empty forests of Mazanderan and immediately observed Russian shipping on the east coast of the Caspian. He was even taken out to sea by one captain and fed caviar and boiled sturgeon, washed down with Russian champagne.

  Alexander made straight for Tehran and reported to James Campbell, the British minister there. Campbell arranged for him to meet the Shah of Persia and recount his journey. Burnes did this in entertaining fashion, answering detailed questions on the cities he had passed through and their rulers. Asked what had impressed him most, Burnes replied it was the sight of the Shah himself; Burnes always performed courtly diplomacy with aplomb.

  Gerard and Lal recuperated for two months at Meshed, and Mohan was of some assistance to the Secretary of the British Legation, John McNeill, who persuaded Abbas Mirza not immediately to march on Herat after taking Qochan. Gerard and Lal also were on good terms in Meshed with Yar Mohammed Khan, Wazir of Herat. They left for Herat, arriving on 30 December. Here Gerard remained a further six months, with Mohan Lal making occasional trips to Meshed for money and medicine. Gerard was in correspondence with McNeill and both were working to prevent a Persian attack on Herat. Lal reported that the ruler of Herat, Shah Kamran Saduzai, was a drunken debauchee addicted to opium.

  On 25 July 1833 Gerard was well enough to leave; Lal and he were suspected by Kamran of being Russian spies. They reached Kandahar on 25 August 1833, where again they remained two months, making friendships with the reigning Dil Khan Barakzai family. Passing through Ghazni, they reached Kabul on 5 November 1833, where Gerard met Charles Masson and gave him some funds, introducing him to Jabbar Khan, who was able to offer patronage for the archaeological investigations Masson had begun. Gerard held discussion with Dost Mohammed about Russo-Persian intentions. Together with Masson and John Martin Honigberger, who was gradually returning from Lahore to Transylvania overland, he spent twelve days in archaeological investigation around Kabul of various topes or stupas, discovering coins, sculptures and inscriptions.

  Karamat Ali had reported back to Wade that in September 1832 Masson set out for Bamian at the invitation of its Governor, Haji Khan Kakar. Masson had been conducting extensive archaeological investigations there and in these Honigsberger, who had already opened several ancient tombs around Kabul, now joined him. Together they were pioneers in uncovering the Greek-influenced early Buddhist kingdoms of Central Asia. Honigberger sent Wade ‘a long account of his excavations’. On reaching Ludhiana, Gerard convinced Wade of ‘their value and importance’. Based on this, on 9 April 1834 Wade wrote to Macnaghten informing him that Masson was a deserter, but that he had initiated correspondence with him. In fact, it had been public knowledge that Masson was a deserter for over a year.13

  Wade acknowledged that ‘Desertion is a crime viewed by our government with a degree of rigour which scarcely admits of pardon’, but suggested that Masson be employed by the British government, taking over the job of newswriter in Kabul:

  It is not merely from the nature of his scientific researches that Mr Masson’s
services will be likely to prove advantageous […] but from […] the information he has collected upon the government and resources of a country which is of daily increasing interest to the Government of India.14

  Newswriters were a form of intelligence agent, but acknowledged to the local authorities – and indeed reports from newswriters were published in the newspapers. The practice was standard between local rulers in India from at least Mughal times. Ranjit Singh also had his newswriter in Kabul, as did the rulers of Kunduz and Bokhara.

  Karamat Ali was dismissed by Wade, a sorry reward for excellent service, on the spurious pretext that his assisting Jabbar Khan in sending his son to study under British teachers in India constituted espionage (even though Wade accepted to supervise the boy). He was eventually re-employed in Kandahar.

  Masson had been touting his antiquarian research to senior British officials. By April 1833 Henry Pottinger was sending him personal donations, and updating him on Burnes’ explorations. James Burnes and John McNeill were similarly in correspondence with Masson.15 After leaving Masson, Gerard and Lal passed on to Jalalabad and conducted their own dig in Bactrian remains at Kanur, discovering coins and burials. Gerard appeared to have recovered his health. He and Lal carried on through the Khyber pass to Peshawar, where they were again guests of Sultan Mohammed. They finally arrived at Lahore on 30 January 1834, and Ludhiana on 7 March. Here Gerard told Wade that Lal had been of tremendous service, and learnt that Burnes had sent a testimonial recommending Lal to Bentinck.

  Wade therefore had no hesitation in hiring Lal as a newswriter on a monthly salary of Rs250 – three times what Burnes had been paying him as munshi. Mohan was sent to Calcutta to be taught the arts of secret surveying and map-making. He was now a Great Game player in his own right. Although he was ostracised by his own Pandit caste for having lived as a Muslim, he received the Order of the Lion and the Sun from Abbas Mirza of Persia, and was given a dress of honour from the puppet Mughal Emperor. Now he was assigned to assist Lieutenant Mackeson, British Agent on the Indus. Lal was based at Ahmadpur, and was employed in surveying and collecting commercial and military information.

  In December 1832 momentous events had been stirring on Burnes’ route. Shah Shuja was ready to launch a military effort to recapture Afghanistan, and had persuaded Wade that his alliance with the British made it in their interest to support him. After some hesitation, Bentinck agreed to let Shuja draw an advance of Rs16,000 and be exempted from duty in purchasing arms and ammunition in the Delhi markets.16

  Shuja then negotiated an alliance with Ranjit Singh. As Shuja still claimed sovereignty over Sind, Ranjit suggested Shikarpur in return for his military assistance. Preventing the Sikhs from taking Shikarpur was a British objective; on Bentinck’s instructions Wade made plain this was not acceptable. Ever the opportunist, Ranjit proposed that Shuja formally cede to him Peshawar instead. Shuja agreed, and a treaty to this effect was signed in March and ratified in August 1833. The consequences were to be immense.

  The EIC Board of Control was taking a lively interest in Burnes’ mission. Urgent despatches were sent to Tehran instructing Alex to come straight to London, without returning first to India. They arrived just after Alex set out for the port of Bushire and return to Bombay on the Company ship of war Clive.

  The Clive reached Bombay on 18 January 1833, but was held in quarantine and Burnes was unable to disembark. He now had to deal with Pottinger’s attack on his Indus survey. Burnes was still Pottinger’s Assistant. He wrote a stiff letter to Pottinger, requesting in proper form that Pottinger pass it on to the Governor-General. He replied to Pottinger’s criticisms that he had underestimated the river by stating that he had been careful to give only minimum depths, because that was needed for navigation. On width, he had given averages of straights and not the many places the river widened significantly, such as bends and junctions. Certainly, Pottinger was wrong in asserting that Burnes had understated the navigability of the Indus, as practical efforts were to prove. On trade and availability of British goods, Burnes stuck by his reports, stating that the statistics were corroborated by the information he had now brought back of the penetration of British goods in Central Asia.17

  On 20 February 1833 Burnes disembarked at Calcutta. That same day, a Russian fleet dropped anchor in Istanbul, to support the Sultan against his rebellious vassal Mehmet Ali. Russia had recently taken vast Turkish territories, and as Russian troops disembarked, it seemed a master-stroke for control of the Bosphorus. There could not have been a more propitious time for a British hero to return from an epic quest intended to thwart Russian designs. Burnes had arrived at his moment in history.

  He had matched intrepidity as an explorer, diplomat and spy with his capacity to produce written work of extraordinary acuteness. Now he produced detailed maps of the entire route from Peshawar to the Caspian, with accompanying annotations and almanacs. He wrote reports on each of the states he had passed, their politics, commerce and military resources. There was an official narrative of his journey, which became the basis of his book. There was a consideration of the logistics of armies moving between Central Asia and India. There were papers on mineral resources, flora and fauna, archaeological excavations, Bactrian coins and the chronology of ancient civilisations. He brought back seeds, and wrote a paper on the melons of Bokhara for the Bombay Horticultural Society.

  The British Empire produced explorers and spies as great as Alexander Burnes. But never one so capable of packaging their knowledge into a vast store of bureaucratically accessible information for the official repository. If you look at Burnes’ surviving output from the period 1831 to 1833, it is incredible that one man could produce it. And it was all hand-written, with a scratchy quill, often in a tent by rushlight after a day in the field.

  It was a blow to Burnes that Charles Metcalfe rejected his proposal that Britain establish an agent at Kabul: ‘Commerce will take care of itself.’18 Metcalfe advised Bentinck that Britain’s interest was best served by avoiding any entanglements across the Indus. However Macnaghten had nothing but praise for Burnes’ ‘noble efforts’.19

  Gerard’s letters had been regularly published in the Indian press, and the progress of the travellers had been eagerly followed.20 Many had expected the affair to end in tragedy, as with Moorcroft. When Burnes arrived in Calcutta, he was therefore not only in high official standing, but a celebrity. There was one dark cloud – malicious reports had been spread by Joseph Wolff. There now followed a vitriolic correspondence between the two, covered gleefully by the press.

  It was a tangled controversy, but the salient points are these. Wolff charged that Burnes denied ‘the divinity of Christ, the inspiration of Scripture, and the usefulness of prayer’. He described Burnes as ‘an awful, prayerless man’ and claimed that he was lying about lending him money.

  For his part, Burnes stated that Wolff was inventing efforts to convert Muslims to Christianity; rather Wolff had declared devotion to the Prophet Mohammed. Burnes also said that Wolff falsely claimed linguistic abilities and had claimed not only to have met Elijah in Kabul, but Jesus in Bokhara. He claimed the ability to cast out devils, and had described Napoleon’s son as the Antichrist. As for the money, Burnes wrote that ‘I have a conscience which tells me I have discharged the offices and duties of humanity, and if they have passed unnoticed, I have yet the silent approbation of my own heart.’21

  Both men were probably telling the truth. Burnes is careful in this controversy to use appropriately religious terms, but notably fails to make a public declaration of belief in the divinity of Christ and the Scripture. Burnes was in fact a religious sceptic or probably Deist; but this was not something he flaunted.

  Wolff claimed he had travelled through Islam’s holiest sites, including Jerusalem, Jedda, Mecca, Bokhara and Meshed, and in each proclaimed the Gospel and attempted the public conversion of Muslims. For him to survive all of those proselytising experiences was not probable, unless Wolff, as Burnes suggested, tried to insinuat
e his Christianity as a form of Islam.

  Burnes’ reports were believed by the religious authorities and, in an age which took religion seriously, Wolff’s actions were strongly disapproved. The Bishop of Calcutta accepted Wolff’s credentials as an ordained priest of the Church of England but banned him from preaching in any of the churches of his diocese.22 This was a crippling blow to Wolff’s social position and to his ability to make money, something in short supply. Wolff, who never failed to flaunt his wife’s aristocratic connections, did not help his cause by publishing attacks on British missionaries in India as working-class, railing at ‘cobbler and carpenter’ and ‘journeyman missionaries’.

  Pottinger wrote to Masson that ‘Wolff has made a considerable impression throughout India […] but there is a great diversity of sentiment as to the light in which he is viewed, some considering him little short of an Apostle and others rating him as an […] adventurer.’23 The Asiatic Journal summarised the general view: ‘Some consider the reverend gentleman mad. Others have less charity.’24 The row did Burnes little harm.

  Alexander’s eventual reception by Bentinck could not have been more fulsome, and he was ordered back to London with the enconium ‘the Government of India considered the information of Lieutenant Burnes as to the state of the countries betwixt India and Russia of such primary importance, that it should be communicated direct to the home authorities by that gentleman himself’.25

  Burnes returned to Bhuj for 6 April, where with James and Elizabeth they celebrated the marriage of his sister Anne to Captain William Ward of the 15th Bombay NI. Alexander’s career seemed certain to go on to great things. As Pottinger wrote to Masson: