by Craig Murray
In February 1837 James was sent by Lord Ramsay to call on the Dukes of Sussex and Leinster, Grand Masters of England and Ireland respectively. These were extremely senior aristocrats: Sussex was the Queen’s uncle. Why James Burnes, a Company doctor on sick leave? He was surely sent to outline the result of his Afghan/Alexandrian and Templar researches to the English and Irish Masonic hierarchies.
I mentioned in chapter one that James Burnes did an extraordinary amount of research into family genealogy, for a peculiar reason. The Order of Knights Templar insisted members must prove pure aristocratic lineage, as did the Order of St John.30 All James’ fellow office-holders in the nineteenth-century Knights Templar were aristocratic. The unpublished goal of James’ book Notes on His Name and Family is an attempt to prove the nobility of his entire line. This reaches the height of silliness with sworn affidavits that the Gleig or Glegg side of the family were descended from French aristocrats and that witnesses had seen a dinner service which bore a coat of arms. James then went to great pains to register these ancestries with the Lyon King of Arms in Edinburgh and to claim a grant of arms, which was registered in 1837 and again in 1851.31 In 1862 James gained a title; he was created a Baron of Saxe Coburg Gotha by Duke Ernest II, brother of Prince Albert. Why Duke Ernest did this is yet another mystery, but Ernest was certainly a Mason.
James Burnes’ History of the Knights Templar claimed that the Templar secrets had been passed on to Scottish Freemasonry under Robert the Bruce to the Lodge Kilwinning in Edinburgh. At that Lodge Canongate Kilwinning No. 2 in Edinburgh on 1 February 1787:
The RW Master having observed that Brother Burns […] who is well known as a great poetic writer, and for a late publication of his works, which have been universally commended, submitted that he should be assumed a member of this Lodge, which was unanimously agreed to[…]32
It is much more of a surprise to find that Rudyard Kipling became a member of Lodge Canongate Kilwinning in 1899 and was appointed the third ‘poet Laureate’ there in 1905. He had no connection to Edinburgh. The Lodge’s own website sounds bemused:
He reportedly ceased to be an active Freemason in 1889 and this is alleged to be the extent of his Masonic career. How then does Rudyard become an Honorary member of Lodge Canongate Kilwinning in 1899 and go on to become her Poet Laureate in 1905?33
The first poet laureate had been Robert Burns. The second, James Hogg, had been appointed by a deputation led by James Burnes. The third, Rudyard Kipling, had written a disguised story about Alexander Burnes.
Again, we are left with the feeling of another story behind the scenes. One person who considered the story seriously is Sean Connery. He played Daniel ‘Sikander’ Dravot in the 1975 John Huston-directed film The Man Who Would Be King. Connery writes ‘The man really credited with reviving the Order [Knights Templar] in Scotland was James Burnes, a relative of the poet Robert Burns […] Burnes, in the spirit of Victorian romanticism, forged a non-existent connection between the Templars and Freemasons.’34
There are two pictures inset in Connery’s text. One is of the painting by Stewart Watson, commissioned by James Burnes, on the centenary of the great Jacobite rebellion, of the adoption of Robert Burns as Poet Laureate by Lodge Canongate Kilwinning. The next picture is of Connery as Daniel ‘Sikander’ Dravot, wearing Masonic regalia.
I visited Lodge Canongate Kilwinning. The windowless building dates from 1735. Its discreet entrance around the side has a nameplate saying ‘Grand Royal Arch’. The gentleman I met knew all about the Burnes family and had been to see their house in Montrose. He showed me inside the temple, which as in the Watson painting is still dominated by the large early eighteenth-century portrait of Lord Sinclair of Rosslyn. The Lodge is on land once owned by the medieval Knights of St John where were formerly their lodgings, close to Holyrood abbey and palace. The adjoining building is the current Scottish HQ of the Order of St John. Immediately across the street is a modern university building still with a sign denoting Dalhousie Land, on the site of the medieval residences of the Ramsay family.
Connery is disparaging of the Rosslyn Templar industry. He sums it up: ‘In Scotland, where the invention of tradition is also a tradition’. He understands the Burnes’ role in inventing this tradition, and its connection to Freemasonry, the Templars and the film. A tradition may be based on little, but its invention is also a fact of history.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
To Meet upon the Level
In 1841 James proposed Maneckji Cursetji, an Assistant Collector with the EIC, for membership of Lodge Perseverance in Bombay. Indians had been initiated in Britain, but never in India. We have seen the ructions attending the admission of white non-commissioned officers in Bombay a decade earlier. The admission of Indians was a step too far for many of the British community, and Cursetji was blackballed, while James found himself at the centre of a social storm.
Cursetji set off for Europe and became a Freemason in Paris. On his return, James proposed that as a visiting Mason Cursetji be admitted to Bombay meetings. This too was defeated, and the net result was that James Burnes as Provincial Grand Master created a new lodge, ‘Rising Star’. A small minority – twenty-six – of Bombay Freemasons quit on 19 November 1843 to join the new lodge formed with a specific multi-racial intent.1 They included George Buist, Dundonian editor of the Bombay Times, and the young Glaswegian Lieutenant William Barr. Over half were military men. Within a very few years most of the members were Indian. It is pleasant to note that future Masters of the Lodge included not only James Burnes, Buist and Barr but also young Leckie, whom we last saw sick at Lahore after looking after the carthorses.
Lodge Perseverance at James’ urging defected, apparently unanimously, from English to Scottish Freemasonry. This was part of a wider movement. ‘Thanks to the personal qualities of Bro. Burnes, Scottish masonry presented such attractions that […] English Masons desert[ed] their mother lodges to such an extent that these fell into abeyance.’2
My research into Burnes commenced with little grasp of Freemasonry. I concluded that it flourished from the eighteenth century because it is at base a reaction to the critique of Christian theology once rationalism triumphed over mysticism as the basis of Western thought. Freemasonry enabled leading thinkers and aristocrats of the Enlightenment to maintain their Christian faith while secretly ascribing to a quasi-religious society with a distinctly Deist creed. Deism was particularly strong among senior officials of the EIC.3 That is not to say this was a conscious rationalisation for most Freemasons, many of whom would have been shocked to have their Christianity impugned – though not Alexander Burnes.
The movement started by James Burnes was unstoppable and all-white Lodges soon vanished. Naturally one of the earliest prominent Indian Freemasons was Mohan Lal. Rudyard Kipling describes with great warmth Masonic meetings where Hindu, Muslim, Christian and Jew met together on terms of equality. There has seldom been a poet more misunderstood than Kipling, whose mission was to explain how the Imperial experience felt to those caught up in it. He was never a purblind nationalist. His poetic description of a Masonic meeting in India encapsulates the achievement of James Burnes:
We’d Bola Nath, Accountant,
An’ Saul the Aden Jew,
An’ Din Mohammed, draughtsman
Of the survey Office too;
There was Babu Chuckerbutty,
An’ Amir Singh the Sikh,
An’ Castro from the fittin’-sheds,
The Roman Catholick!
We ‘adn’t good regalia
An’ our Lodge was old an’ bare,
But we knew the Ancient Landmarks,
An’ we kep’ ‘em to a hair
An’ lookin’ on it backwards
It often strikes me thus,
There ain’t such things as infidels,
Except, perhaps, it’s us.
For monthly, after Labour,
We’d all sit down and smoke,
(We dursn’t give no banquits,
&n
bsp; Lest a brother’s caste were broke),
An’ man on man got talkin’
Religion an’ the rest,
An’ every man comparing
Of the God ‘e knew the best.
The conscious effort of Freemasonry to counter discrimination undoubtedly had some mitigating effect. ‘Some Lodges provided a special arena where Masonic hierarchy superceded the usual colonial hierarchy based on ethnicity.’4 The Burnes brothers were active at the high-water mark of Royal and aristocratic involvement in Freemasonry. The participation of so many of the Imperial governing class in an avowedly anti-racist and egalitarian brotherhood helped the movement that undercut the philosophy of racist imperialism.
James Burnes is still a revered figure among Indian Freemasons, although the institution is in decay and holds little attraction for the new Indian business elite. However, in asserting the equality of men, Freemasonry contributed significantly in its time to undermining the mental foundations of Empire among both Indians and British, and the Burnes brothers played a key role in kick-starting that process. They were part of a little Angus group that did much to shape the future of India. George Buist made the Bombay Times the great newspaper that was to become the Times of India, the largest circulation English language paper in the world. Montrose-born Allan Octavian Hume, son of Joseph Hume, was to found the Congress Party, which became the largest democratic political party in the world. Its founding membership was dominated by Indian Freemasons.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Imperial Rivalry in Asia
Russia, like Britain, was actively seeking to expand trade with Central Asia. Just as Britain strived to open a new route via the Indus, so Russia, whose land caravans came from Petropavlovsk to Tashkent, or Orenburg to Bokhara, planned a route via the Caspian. The Tsar’s government was acutely aware that it was difficult to find export markets for Russian manufactures compared to the more industrialised British. It viewed Central Asia as economic hinterland, and was alarmed at the implications of British activism there for Russia’s economic development. As Foreign Minister Nesselrode wrote to his Ambassador in London on 20 October 1838, the Tsar’s cabinet was concerned by the
indefatigable activity displayed by English travellers in […] carrying agitation even into the heart of the countries bordering on our frontiers […] we ask nothing but to be admitted to partake in fair competition [for] the commercial advantages of Asia. English industry […] would deprive us entirely of the benefits which it seeks to reap alone; and would cause, if it could, the products of our manufacturers to disappear from Central Asia.1
Count Perovsky, the Russian Governor-General of Orenburg, was an important political figure and one of Tsar Nicholas’ closest friends. He was continually pushing Nesselrode for a forward policy. In 1836 he wrote:
If Shah Shujah ul Mulk seizes Afghanistan then the country will be entirely subject to the East India Company and […] all Central Asia will be in their hands. Our Asian trade will collapse and […] the English will encourage the neighbouring lands against us and will supply them with munitions, weapons and money […] The English maintain their devotees, or those whom they have bought, not only in Kabul, but even in Bukhara itself. They act against us, use every circumstance in order to harm us and our trade, and in order to oppose them it is necessary to pay in the same kind of coin.2
Both British and Russians had the same fear – that advances by their rival would lead to a loss of prestige which would encourage uprisings against them in already conquered territories. Both countries concluded that the only way to counter this was to advance towards the other. It was a classic mutual escalation.
Historians tend to compartmentalise the Mediterranean and the Central Asian regions in their analysis of Anglo-Russian relations. But this was not how matters looked from London or Calcutta in the 1830s. Rather, Russian expansionism and the conflicts of the Ottoman Empire, Egypt, Persia and Afghanistan were a continuum. Developments in any of these countries could impact on communications with British India and encourage those intermittently fighting the British inside and around it. Therefore when conflict with Russia appeared likely over Mehmet Ali’s advances against the Ottoman Empire, British India held its breath. In October 1834 Henry Pottinger wrote to Charles Masson:
Rumours are very current of war between England & Russia, and it is even asserted that Sir Pulteney Malcolm had sailed early in June with a very large fleet to the Baltic whilst it is stated that Sir Josiah Rowley with the Mediterranean fleet has proceeded to the Dardanelles […] but I believe a rupture with Russia would be very unpopular in England and H.M. Ministers will avoid it if they possibly can.3
Having steadily encroached on Persia’s Caucasian provinces, the Russians were attempting to turn Persia into a protectorate. A senior diplomat, Count General Simonicz, was promising subsidies and active military support and fuelling Persian ambition towards Herat, to compensate Persia for losses elsewhere to Russia. Russia was not unhappy to see Persian forces removed from the zone of potential further Russian expansion, and whittled down in a siege. But Simonicz also believed it an advantage to Russia to unsettle Britain. He was as aware as the British that the real threat was events outside India encouraging a national uprising within. As he wrote: ‘Naturally I asked myself what reasons guide England in this minute surveillance of the military establishments of Persia […] What are they afraid of? Their precarious situation in India!’4
Simonicz led an extensive mission to Teheran. By contrast the British – who had until now enjoyed a monopoly as the only diplomatic mission permitted – had the Resident, Sir James Campbell, and his assistant McNeill. Campbell was not thought of highly. Lord Clare suggested to London that Bombay had just the man who could outweigh Russian influence – Alexander Burnes. He was therefore offered the position of Ambassador to Persia. The appointment was initially as Secretary to the Legation, with the understanding that Campbell would quickly be recalled and Burnes succeed him as Ambassador.
From 10 December 1834 to 8 April 1835 Whig rule was interrupted by a short-lived Tory administration, in which Lord Ellenborough was President of the Board of Control. Ellenborough, a fierce partisan, regarded Burnes as too close to the Whigs, and was seeking to block the promised preferment.5 But in any event Burnes turned the offer down. This was extraordinary – he remained Assistant Resident in Cutch, and was still a Lieutenant. Ambassador to Persia was a huge promotion, with the additional attraction of working jointly for the Company and the Foreign Office, opening up a new career path. But Burnes felt he had become a figure of influence in India, and that the top appointments were there to be reached for.
Burnes did not take the decision lightly – he consulted widely, including with Mountstuart Elphinstone and John Stuart Mill. He justified his decision to turn down Persia boldly: ‘What are a colonelcy and a KLS6 to me? I look far higher, and shall either die or be so.’ Burnes had become firm friends with McNeill, whose book The Progress and Present Position of Russia in the East (1836) was the most influential of all the publications representing the Russian threat to India. In England the two advised on each other’s manuscripts. Although McNeill’s book was anonymous, all of official London knew the author.
For Burnes to have accepted would have been to block McNeill’s career. On Burnes declining, McNeill was appointed, with Burnes’ commendation: ‘He is an able fellow, and by far the fittest person in England for the situation.’7 They remained firm friends.
Burnes was also close with Mountstuart Elphinstone, who lived a solitary, syphilis-blighted life in England but had warmed to the fellow Scot who in many ways was following in his footsteps. Burnes outlined to Elphinstone his wish to become Envoy to Kabul. But Elphinstone, who was well aware that such appointments frequently led to military entanglement, was against further British involvement in Afghanistan.8 So was Henry Tucker, Chairman of the Court of Directors. Alex lobbied to be appointed to head a commercial mission. Tucker ‘declined then to propose or concur in th
e appointment […] feeling pretty sure that it must soon degenerate into a political agency, and that we should […] be involved in […] the entanglements of Afghan politics’.9
Burnes had financial security for a while. He had received £840 from John Murray for his book,10 and a healthy bank balance must have contributed to his optimism.
He was travelling back on the Company’s new fast steamer route, including overland via Suez. From there, Burnes joined the Hugh Lindsay to sail down the Red Sea and on to Bombay. This pioneering steam vessel had been built by the Company in Bombay in 1828, but was very uncomfortable. Built with insufficient space for coal for her inefficient steam engines, it started voyages with coal stored even in the saloon and passenger cabins, and had to put in to port to refuel every five days.11 It is nonetheless astonishing that just sixteen years after the world’s first commercial steamship service on the Clyde, a locally-built oceangoing steamship was sailing out of Bombay. Putting in for coals at Jeddah, Burnes met a French government official, M. Fontanier.
Fontanier wrote that Burnes was overrated as a traveller. A number of Frenchmen, including Court, Ventura and Allard, had also travelled in Central Asia without becoming so famous, and Court’s command of the Persian language was better than Burnes’. He also felt that Travels into Bokhara was not all Burnes’ own work:
Sir Alexander’s work had been taken up by the East India Company, and was revised and corrected by Mr Elphinstone […] not only did he add his own observations, but caused the officer to suppress certain passages which he considered prejudicial to the interests of the British Government.