Sikunder Burnes

by Craig Murray

  When you pass by the boundary of Kerman […] you will detail the following particulars […] namely the state of the towns and villages […] an estimate of the population and strength of the tribes at such places, Seistanees, Beloochees, Afghans and Kuzzilbashes, an account of the revenue and expenditure of these countries, their produce, their principal cultivation, & from what kind of cultivation most profit is made: and an account of the taxes […] and of the impact of commerce; finally whether there is water on the road and whether the latter is level or mountainous […]

  passing through Beloochistan, you must raise great expectations of the munificence of His Majesty in the minds of the Khans of Beloochistan and Seeistan […] All these Khans should […] prepare their troops […] they are to join the Royal Stirrup.

  At Kandahar he will deliver the firman and robes of honour to Kohundil Khan […] and excite his hopes of the generosity of His Majesty […] Kohundil Khan must undertake to send one of his brothers in advance to the Court while he himself will […] await the arrival of the Royal Army. He will get his troops in readiness and prepare as much cavalry as is practicable for please God the campaign of Herat will be entrusted to him […] Kumber Ali Khan will form an acquaintance with all the persons in authority and with the Afghan and Kuzzilbash Khans as well as with the Kuzzilbashes in general. The object will be to excite their hopes of generosity […]

  When he has finished his affairs in Candahar he will proceed to Kabul and deliver a dagger as a mark of His Majesty’s favor to Dost Mohammed Khan, and he will convey the auspicious robes of honour to Nawab Jubber Khan. He […] will give them the strongest assurances that after the arrival of the royal army in those countries, favors of every description shall be unceasingly lavished on them […] and he will declare that, please God, Dost Mohammed Khan shall enjoy the royal favor to such an extent that these countries shall be placed completely in his possession, and he shall have entire control over them […]40

  Persian diplomacy was no less sophisticated than British. The Persians thought Dost the best man to rule all Afghanistan as a Persian tributary, but this was to be kept from other Afghan rulers. Burnes recognised that Qambar Ali was engaged in the same game as himself. He commented to McNeill on seeing these intercepted instructions: ‘Why the Government of India in despatching me to Bokhara gave me nothing so perfect, and in my present journey, tho’ they are as anxious for accurate information as it is possible, they do not put forward so accurate an outline […]’41

  Poor Dr Gerard had died of malaria shortly before Burnes reached India. His final months, at the small post of Subatu, had been miserable. He had spent a year travelling back from Persia due to long halts to recover his health. In consequence he had been absent from duty, and the Company caused problems over his pay and expenses. While Burnes received both an allowance and a substantial bonus, all Gerard got was eventual agreement that he would receive the same money for the entire period of his travels as he would have got on normal duty with the engineering corps.42 The government refused to accept most of his expenses and his bills were repudiated.

  Burnes was pursued everywhere by creditors bearing bills for Gerard. He received some which he had no doubt were genuine, and was exasperated at the attitude of the Company, advised by Claude Wade, in refusing to meet them. From Dera Ghazi Khan on 2 June 1837 Burnes wrote to Masson:

  I have come to the resolution of paying those of Dr Gerard from my own pocket if I cannot move Government and […] have already advanced 2300 Rs at Shikapore – but national honor is too dear at present to be swapped for a few thousand rupees and if poor Gerard himself were alive I know he would have lived on bread and water to avoid it. I have […] no doubt of the justice of many demands that have been challenged […] Dr G’s seal and signature and a detail of expenditure supercede contradiction tho’ Cap. Wade may hesitate.43

  In thus redeeming the credit of his fellow Scot, Burnes was taking a personal risk, as the Company had already repudiated Gerard’s claims. Burnes wrote to Macnaghten that Gerard had needed the money to make payments and gifts to chiefs and their servants, and to kafila bashis, qasids and guides. The claims amounted to Rs7,188.44 The Court of Directors eventually repaid Burnes Rs2,306 ‘on account of alleged debts of the late Dr Gerard, directing him at the same time to exert extreme caution in the admission of such claims’.45 Burnes paid out a considerably greater amount. In the correspondence on Gerard’s debts, Masson had evidently complained of some wrongdoing in Kabul by Mohan Lal. We have only Burnes’ reply, which suggests that Lal ‘as an inexperienced youth had been betrayed into much that was blameable’, and should be forgiven. This may refer to payments which had been made by Burnes through Masson and Mulla Rahim to the family of ‘Mohan Lal’s girl’.46 Alexander was loyal to his friends.

  On 9 June, a petty theft had taken place on Burnes’ boat, and he intervened to prevent a trial by ordeal. The suspects were being forced to pick copper coins from a cauldron of boiling oil; if they were burnt they were guilty. In the afternoon he collected many crocodile eggs, but could not try eating them as all he broke contained young.47

  On 20 June at Dera Ismael Khan the mission was met by Mackeson. Here Burnes received another friendly letter from Ranjit Singh, anxious for support in the dispute over possession of the fort of Roghan.

  On 14 July 1837 Burnes’ flotilla arrived at Kala Bagh. The Indus was fierce with monsoon rains. Sails, oars, bullocks and tow-ropes all strained to make progress. The attempt was futile. ‘The scene is wild, picturesque and striking,’ wrote Burnes, ‘but I fear it is the end of our grand voyage.’48 However Lt Wood was left with two small boats to make headway against the current. Burnes and his party continued by land. They had now acquired a Sikh escort, and to Burnes’ frustration they insisted it was not safe to take the direct route through Tutun Dera, but rather they must continue up the Indus’ eastern bank.49 Burnes was however pleased to receive a letter from Dost Mohammed’s secretary explaining that Mohammed Akbar had arranged an escort for him through the Khyber pass.50

  The battle of Jamrud had sparked renewed resistance among the Muslim populations ruled by Ranjit, and the flotilla sailed right through a force of 10,000 men and eighteen guns under Sujit Singh, which was sent against Ahmad Khan, chief of the Isa Khail. At night, they heard the war drums of both parties, and the next day saw the remarkable situation that the Sikhs were escorting part of Burnes’ party up the left bank and the opposing Pathans the remainder up the right.51

  On 22 July the party were proceeding along an ‘execrable road’, but buoyed by the news that Eldred Pottinger had finally made it safely to Kabul. Their progress was further impeded by being jumbled with a regiment of Sikh irregular cavalry on its way to join Ranjit, which was commanded by an Englishman, Captain Fawkes. It was dawning on Burnes that Ranjit did not approve of this mission – little assistance was forthcoming and ‘we have not a single individual of consequence with us’ as they passed through Sikh territory.52 On 30 July Wood reappeared, having been prevented from sailing to Attock as nobody would crew for him.

  On 1 August they were joined by Hugh Falconer and his collaborator Captain Proby Cautley. Burnes heard from Dost Mohammed that he was receiving proposals and diplomatic representatives were being sent from both Persia and Russia, but he would do nothing until Burnes arrived. Burnes immediately wrote to Colvin and Macnaghten insisting that he needed more powers and discretion to act, noting in his diary, ‘I am to talk, they [the Persians and Russians] are to act. They had better recall me than act thus.’ He was to repeat often a belief that Auckland was placing him in an impossible situation.

  But that same evening there was time for enjoyment amid the gloom. They dined al fresco in the beautiful but decaying Mughal garden, flooded with roses, the Bagh-i-Wah. ‘We pitched our camp by the crystal rivulet, filled our glasses with Burgundy, and drank to the memory of the fame of Noor Muhal and her immortal poet Thomas Moore.’

  Burnes frequently quotes Moore and his ‘Mughal’
poetry, especially Lalla Rook. He had met Moore in London, and Burnes’ own works are accounted an influence on Moore. Undoubtedly this poetic sensibility affected Burnes’ attitudes, particularly his partiality for Islamic culture. Moore’s reputation has not proved ‘immortal’, but he was enormously popular at this time, across all of Europe. His poetry inspired music by Schumann and Berlioz, and countless artists and writers. Tsar Nicholas and his Tsarina played roles from Moore in sumptuous tableaux.53 The passage Burnes is here referencing – and presumes his readers will get the reference – is

  The mask is off – the charm is wrought –

  And Selim to his heart has caught,

  In blushes, more than ever bright

  His Nourmahal, his Haram’s light!

  And well do vanish’d frowns enhance

  The charm of every brighten’d glance;

  And dearer seems each dawning smile

  For having lost its light awhile;

  And happier now, for all its sighs,

  As on his arm her head reposes,

  She whispers him, with laughing eyes,

  ‘Remember, love, the Feast of Roses!’54

  That was a wonderful evening under the stars in Hasan Abdal – the rivulet, the roses, the burgundy, Goncalves’ guitar, the poetry and added to Burnes’ mission of already very remarkable men, the great paleontologists Falconer and Cautley, who much influenced Darwin. Cautley also was the genius who designed and constructed the great Ganges canal.

  By the time Burnes reached Attock on 6 August the news was alarming. The Russian-officered Persians were marching on Herat; Qambar Ali was in Kandahar; Dost Mohammed was in correspondence with the Russians and had written to the Governor-General threatening a Russian alliance if Britain did not assist him over Peshawar. Burnes was heading straight into the eye of this diplomatic storm. Alexander wrote to Masson of Auckland’s indecision:

  I much fear with such a haver I shall yet be involved in great embarrassments. I have only one sheet anchor left which is that they will be moved in Calcutta to make some decided exertion at variance with our late sleepy policy and if they act not then I even question the propriety of their having ever deputed me to Cabool.55

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Peshawar Perverted

  On 12 August 1837 Burnes, Leech and Lord arrived at Peshawar. Burnes’ previous stay had been idyllic, before the Sikh conquest. He was now a guest of the new Governor, Avitabile, the most extraordinary of Ranjit’s European officers. Burnes had met him in Lahore, and was pleased to see a friendly face. There were letters of welcome waiting from Allard and Court.

  Avitabile was a forty-five-year-old Neapolitan, who had been a Sergeant-Major in the Napoleonic artillery and eventually entered Sikh service via Turkey and Persia. He had been appointed by the Shah to govern turbulent Persian provinces, where he had succeeded through utmost brutality. In Ranjit Singh’s service since 1826, he had become Governor of Wazirabad in 1829, where he greatly increased revenues by similar tactics, and became Governor in April 1835 of Peshawar, newly conquered and unreconciled.

  His words were not empty bragging:

  When I marched into Peshawar I sent on in advance a number of wooden posts, which my men erected around the walls of the city. The men […] laughed at the madness of the Feringhi, and louder still when my men came in and laid coils of rope at the foot of the posts. Guns and swords, they said, were the arms to rule the city, and not sticks and ropes. However, when my preparations were completed, they found one fine morning dangling from these posts, fifty of the worst characters in Peshawar, and I repeated the exhibition every day till I had made a scarcity of brigands and murderers.

  Then I had to deal with the liars and tale-bearers. My method with them was to cut out their tongues […] And then a surgeon appeared and professed to be able to restore their speech. I sent for him, and cut out his tongue also.1

  For variation, Avitabile liked to hang people in rows, alternately by the neck and the feet. He introduced skinning alive on a large scale; it took two hours for the victim to die. He was a psychotic sadist. Dr Honigberger recorded:

  He was afflicted with a frequent contraction of the muscles of his face […] this disease I attributed to his immoderate consumption of champagne […] The pleasure which he took in seeing people hung in dozens must be attributed to the affection of his brain […] Living in his house for three years, I had the opportunity of knowing him well.2

  Avitabile also had an ill-controlled sexuality. Masson in Lahore, Wolff in Wazirabad and Barr in Peshawar all refer to pornographic paintings in Avitabile’s bedrooms. He insisted on taking visitors to see them. He was ‘unscrupulous in gratifying his lust’, and British Indian historians in 1929 could only say that: ‘Avitabile’s moral delinquencies and fiendish cruelties are even now remembered in the districts he once governed, by legends or grim stories, some of which we dare not publish.’3 They did publish the skinning alive.

  These unpublishable moral delinquencies included paedophilia. Several British officers noted the children around Avitabile. Lieutenant William Barr was entertained to a nautch in 1839:

  Amongst the number were a few children, varying from seven to ten years of age, who […] are gradually being initiated into the mysteries of a craft most derogatory in its nature, as carried on in the East […]

  Behind the governor stood two of his servants, a pair of diminutive Afghan boys […] one of whom […] would have made a remarkably pretty girl; he, however, looked quite out of place in attendance upon a masculine individual like Avitabile, and would have been better suited for the occupation of a lady’s page.4

  Surgeon-General Atkinson noted of Avitabile the same year:

  he lives in good style, and is distinguished for his hospitality, which has been amply experienced and acknowledged by the British officers […] On every occasion, his table has been crowded with guests, and, according to oriental custom, the sumptuous entertainments always concluded with a grand nautch, his figurante-company of Cashmeer women consisting of about thirty, singers and dancers, from the age of twelve to twenty-five.5

  By 1840, Avitabile was entertaining so many British officers that he obtained a monthly allowance of Rs1000 towards the expense. Here we have one of those rare glimpses behind the curtain that reveals the truth about the ‘nautches’ which were such a frequent feature of the lives of British officials:

  At the same time the Government of India, who had heard of the disgraceful orgies which attended some of the entertainments, directed that none but the most senior officers were to be entertained by him, and gave the political officer an allowance of 500Rs a month, on behalf of the younger ones.6

  So the senior officers got the disgraceful orgies, and the junior officers got dinner with Mackeson.

  Yet Burnes is more reticent than other British sources about Avitabile. He states in Cabool that the hospitality was ‘princely’ but gives no detail; and of the mutilated corpses displayed in scores all around the city, Burnes makes no mention, beyond noting the existence of gallows and that ‘the General did not pretend to be guided by European ideas’, and ‘his measures appeared to us to be somewhat oppressive’.

  Burnes stayed a full nineteen days in Peshawar, living with his mission in the beautiful gardens of the Wazir Bagh, where he had been so happy on his previous stay. He was regularly entertained by Avitabile. One explanation of Burnes’ discretion is that the epicurean food – Avitabile kept eight excellent chefs – unlimited champagne and ‘disgraceful orgies’ were much to Burnes’ taste. It was not diplomatic reticence: the heir to the Sikh throne, Khurruck Singh, was also in Peshawar, and Burnes had no hesitation in publishing that ‘His imbecility is such that he can scarcely return an answer to the most simple question.’7

  Khurruck invited Burnes to a review of the Sikh army, where Burnes met senior Sikh nobles including Lena Singh, who asked on Ranjit’s behalf what was the object of his mission to Dost Mohammed. Burnes replied that it was purely commercial, and
that Britain would never act against the interests of Ranjit Singh.8 Lena replied that only the friendship of the British restrained Ranjit from taking Jalalabad and Kabul. Burnes was then asked directly about British designs on Shikarpur, which they had prevented Ranjit from annexing. Burnes assured Khurruck Singh that the British had no desire to take Shikarpur, but merely wished to prevent war. Wade inserted a marginal comment on Burnes’ report of this meeting, that Burnes should not have been so categorical in ruling out British annexation of Shikarpur.9 The taking of Sind was already on the British agenda.

  Burnes found the Sikh occupation of Peshawar distressing. Orchards had been uprooted, gardens destroyed and mosques turned over to stables. ‘Mohammedan usages had disappeared – the sounds of dancing and music were heard at all hours and all places.’ He was especially saddened by a visit from the Barakzai brothers in whose company he had been so happy, and by the official constraints which prevented him from sympathising with them.10

  He was forced to keep professional distance with Sultan: ‘I drew before him a broad line of distinction between the feelings of a friend and of a public servant.’ But he also expressed to Masson his disgust that Sultan Mohammed had betrayed his religion in helping Ranjit Singh take Peshawar and that ‘it yet appears to me conduct outraging to every Moslem […] The Moslems will not view it in the light of a gratification of private enmity but as a breach of faith.’ Local Muslims called him ‘Sultan Singh’.11

  The great paleontologist Hugh Falconer was still with the mission. Exploratory work continued, and Falconer and Lord set out for Kohat on a geological investigation of the tectonic depression there.

  There was an element of pure science in the remit of Burnes’ mission, although of course the Company was interested in the commercial benefit of anything discovered. But you cannot study this period without being impressed at the amount of official time, money and resources put into geological, paleontological, astronomical, meteorological, historical, literary, ethnographic, and archaeological investigation, and the varied interests and wide education of the military officers involved.