Sikunder Burnes

by Craig Murray

  Dost viewed with horror the looming conflict with Britain. With Mehir Dil Khan, he now made one final offer, accepting all British demands. He would agree to Sultan Jan Mohammed having Peshawar as tributary to Ranjit Singh. Kabul and Kandahar would both agree to cease all diplomatic and trade relations with Persia and Russia. In return they asked for a British guarantee against military attack from Persia. This Burnes was specifically precluded from giving, so this last attempt at conciliation also failed. Dost wrote to Auckland, offering to accept almost any terms:

  If Herat falls into the hands of the Persians, it will cause serious loss and damage to the whole country of Affghanistan […] I hope […] that your lordship will apply an immediate cure to my pains, for the Russians are publicly assisting the Persians.

  If your lordship is pleased to bestow a little trouble to adjust affairs between this country and the Maharajah Runjeet Sing, who is the great and old ally of the British, how is it possible that we should make objections to it, or to suitable arrangements for peace.15

  He went on to quote the defensive treaty signed by Shuja and Mountstuart Elphinstone in 1809, an excellent point which showed that he regarded Kabul as a continuing state. The British stance was to ignore Kabul’s rights as a state and treat it as some kind of second order tribal chieftaincy. There was one last Afghan attempt to re-open negotiations through the agency of Josiah Harlan. Again Burnes refused to involve the American.

  Burnes had delayed in Kabul, awaiting the return of Lord and Wood from Kunduz once the passes cleared of snow; but found his position impossible and quit on 26 April. Burnes had one last, mutually sorrowful, meeting with the Emir. There was a flash of temper from the Emir when Burnes referred to Britain’s willingness to restrain Ranjit Singh; the Emir replied ‘that if the Governor General believed it was protection of Cabool he had sued for, it was a mistake’. Dost still supplied free provisions and carriage for all of Burnes’ party. Burnes rode out alongside Masson, with high marks of honour, accompanied for several miles by three of the Emir’s sons. Burnes had sent Leech in Kandahar a message to return to Shikarpur via the Bolan pass.

  Another professional Ambassador – Afzal Khan – made a detailed study of Burnes’ proceedings in Kabul, and refutes the notion that Burnes did anything wrong.16 Burnes’ professional conduct as a diplomat was impeccable. The First Afghan War happened despite Burnes, not because of him, because his superiors were determined that it would happen.

  As Burnes was leaving Kabul, Eldred Pottinger in Herat was having to eat the same wormwood, and tell Yar Mohammed and his ministers that the offers of financial assistance made to the defenders would not now be honoured, and that he had exceeded his instructions in making them. This instruction from Macnaghten had come to Eldred via John McNeill, who like Burnes then closed his mission and withdrew from the Shah’s camp after copious insults. British diplomacy appeared in collapse throughout the region.

  Burnes rode quickly from Kabul, spurred by the bitterness of failure. He offered the Frenchman Cerron the position of newswriter in Kabul on Rs250 a month, and gave him an immediate advance of Rs 1,000. Cerron fulfilled his role conscientiously, though Wood discovered that his travelling tales had been inventions.17 Cerron, like all Great Game players on the British side, was to run into accounting difficulties after cashing bills to the tune of Rs6,000, to pay informants. This was still unresolved when he died on a mission for the British government in Bajour in 1839.

  The mission now returned down the river. In Jalalabad they waited while rafts were built, and then shot down the Kabul water to Peshawar. The river tumbles down beneath walls of stone so high that often there is no point from which any sky is visible and nowhere that a person tossed from a boat could get a footing. Speed was not the only attraction – the route avoided the different but still very real dangers of a journey through the Khyber pass. Burnes employed characteristic understatement in his journal: ‘the excitement in passing down the river of Cabool was very great and great care is required […]’ One of their rafts was churned round the Fuzul whirlpool for three hours. He described the worst rapid:

  I shall never forget in my life the approach to it. We had dropped down for half an hour under heavy clouds and with precipitous rocks of some hundreds of feet on either side. As we approached the famed spot we could see the water boiling […] and nearing it thunder rolled and lightning flashed, the wind lifted the water upon us but we passed all in safety.

  Burnes reached Peshawar late on 4 May 1838, and was joined by Lord and Wood twelve days later.18 There he vented his anger at Auckland in a letter to James:

  The game is up. The Russians gave me the coup de grace & I could hold on no longer at Cabool so I have fallen back upon Peshawar […] the Secretary of the Russian legation Mr Goutt came down with […] offers of assistance and money, and as I had no powers to counteract him by a similar offer, and got wigged for talking of it […] we must now do something and that too rapidly for Herat is on the eve of falling and Russia promises to aid Cabool in fighting Runjeet Sing!! – I am not so much chagrined at my retrograde movements as you would expect […] only save me from ever again working under a ‘safe man’ as my Chief is designated by his party in England […] I […] shall either be ordered to Simla or Sinde, or to await the fall of Herat, or to lead the ex-King against the Barukzyes, this last I will not do – The Barukzyes consigned themselves to us, and merely asked for Persia to be warned off and we would not do it!19

  Burnes was to allow his mind to be changed on leading Shuja against the Barakzais.

  He had left before he received a reply from Auckland explicitly approving his departure. He was highly relieved to receive an instruction from Auckland to quit, dated the day after they had left Kabul.20

  Other news reached him in Peshawar. Holland’s sister Cecilia was now on the way out to India.21 It appears highly probable that her brother’s in-law, the famous Alexander Burnes, was high on her list of targets. Sadly the two were never to meet.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Regime Change

  Burnes’ recall from Kabul coincided with despatches from Palmerston to Auckland, urging him to counteract the growing threat from Russia.1 The network of Burnes’ agents was still active, and Alex in Peshawar received copies of Witkiewicz’ reporting. Auckland therefore soon saw Witkiewicz’ proposal for the Russian-backed Persian army to come through the Khyber pass to Peshawar.

  This makes the British invasion of Afghanistan less inexplicable. The decision was facilitated by a constitutional quirk. When physically separated from his Supreme Council, the Governor-General could take decisions alone. This was sensible as government could not be paralysed when the Governor-General was travelling, but it had not been envisaged that he would abandon his capital for a lengthy period. Lord Auckland was absent from Calcutta on a ‘progress’ which lasted from January 1837 to February 1840. The Company’s government became, by default, an autocracy. The Council were almost entirely cut out of decision making. Letters from London were sent first to the Governor-General in his camp, and only then copied on by him to the Council in Calcutta together with his replies and decisions.2

  Lord Auckland on tour had a retinue of 12,000. But the only ones who counted were William Macnaghten, John Colvin and Henry Torrens, respectively the Political, Private and Deputy Secretaries. Do not be confused by terminology. These were extremely powerful men. The influence of this clique was understood – and resented – throughout British India. In the remote southern station of Rajamundri, the wife of the district judge could write home in 1838:

  India is, in fact, governed by the Private Secretaries, who […] are often intent only on feathering their own nests and promoting their young relations. Half the experienced men in the country who really understand matters are kept in subordinate situations.3

  Auckland was a vacillating character, easily influenced. John Colvin was haughty and arrogant. Colvin and Macnaghten had the primary influence in launching the invasion of Afgh
anistan.

  Henry Torrens was the most junior and consistently denied any involvement in decision-making, saying his role was purely administrative. There is no compelling evidence otherwise. Torrens was a minor poet of some merit, who composed a verse address to James Burnes on his Masonic tour of Calcutta in 1840.4 Macnaghten and Torrens had been charged by the Asiatic Society with producing a translation of The Thousand and One Nights, which shows another side to the Imperial administrators, though they sadly bowdlerised their effort.

  Colvin was second son of the proprietor of a major Scottish merchant house in Calcutta; he had been educated in St Andrews and became an accomplished golfer. St Andrews University was then a corrupt and intellectually moribund institution of 150 students. It has of course changed – it now has more students. Leaving the university at fourteen he went on to the EIC college at Haileybury, in the same year with Charles Trevelyan. He was the very stuff of the Raj: related to Charles Metcalfe, John Kaye, Henry Lawrence and Sam Browne.5 On arrival in Calcutta in 1826 the nineteen-year-old Colvin became Assistant to Macnaghten at the Court of Appeal, and then in various Residencies until 1830, when Macnaghten secured him a job in Calcutta in the Revenue and Judicial Department.

  Colvin and Macnaghten were at the heart of the tight Calcutta social circle which included Trevelyan and Macaulay. When Auckland arrived in 1836, Macnaghten recommended Colvin to be the Governor-General’s Private Secretary. Colvin was very much Macnaghten’s man.

  Auckland’s ‘Progress’ was nearly scuppered. The year 1837 was one of drought along the north-west frontier, in which 500,000 died. After the Governor-General’s column reached Cawnpore, Macnaghten tried to convince him to turn back because of the strain that 12,000 men and 30,000 baggage animals would put on the devastated area. But Auckland and his sisters were anxious for a cooler climate, so the progress continued. The Edens had been thrown together with his staff in the intense companionship of camp life, an intimacy otherwise impossible in their society. As Emily Eden noted:

  besides the odd native groups our friends catch us up in their deshabille – Mrs A [Colvin] carrying the baby in an open carriage, Mrs C [Torrens] with hers fast asleep in a tonjaun […]Mrs B [Macnaghten] carrying Mr B’s pet cat in her palanquin carriage, with her ayah opposite guarding the parroquet from the cat.6

  In this poor atmosphere for decision-making, Auckland’s views assimilated to those of his companions.

  Auckland finally made a firm commitment to the restoration of Shah Shuja in a minute of 12 May 1838, drafted in his own hand. His minute7 opens with a review of historic British policy, and blames the weak state of Afghanistan on internal Barakzai feuding. It then details minutely the reasons for war:

  The rapid and successful advance of Persia […] the presence of a Russian agent at Cabool, and his own restless and unaccommodating spirit, have led Dost Mohammed to reject the terms which are held out to him of security in his actual possessions […] since […] my despatch of the 8th February to the Honorable Secret Committee, in which I stated that it was not then my intention to oppose the hostile move of Persian forces upon Candahar and Cabool […] circumstances have occurred which may materially alter my views. For now Russian agents have prominently put themselves forward in support of the designs of Persia […] The extraordinary excitement which has been produced in the public mind […] in consequence of the approach of the Persian power, is also a signal to me of the mischief that might arise were that power to attain a settled influence of authority over all the Afghan countries […]

  Dost Mahommed Khan has shown himself to be so disaffected and ambitious that, with him at least, we could form no satisfactory connection […]

  It is clear to me that, upon the departure of Captain Burnes […] a declaration should be made to Runjeet Singh […] He may be invited to state the measures […] which, by himself or in concert with us, he may be inclined to pursue, for the security of his Western frontier, and we may tender our cooperation […] it may be remarked to him, that any endeavour on his part, exclusively to establish his authority in Cabool, would combine against him all national and religious feeling and would almost ensure failure. But as […] he is not likely to take this course, he would rather […] like to assure to himself a friendly Afghan influence at Cabool, by enabling Shah Shoojah ool Moolk to proceed, with better arms and equipment, on a second expedition to recover his throne.

  Some degree of concert on his part with us will probably be felt by him, in every event, to be expedient […]

  Should Herat fall […] we must prepare to see the most rapid advance of Persian influence, if not her arms, towards India […] we may take the course of resistance to Persia without […] hampering ourselves by the additional embarrassment of reference to the Russian connection […] giving our aid and countenance in concert with Runjeet Singh to enable Shah Shuja ool Moolk to re-establish his sovereignty in the Eastern division of Afghanistan under engagements which shall conciliate the feelings of the Sikh ruler, and bind the restored monarch to the support of our interest appears to me that, which is decidedly the most deserving of attention […] Runjeet Singh would assist by the employment of a portion of his troops and we by some contribution in money and the presence of an accredited agent of the government and of a sufficient number of officers for the direction of the Shah’s army […] Shah Shooja […] so attended might be expected rapidly to disperse or break down all formidable elements of opposition […] in such a scheme of defensive alliance […] the Scindians must be […] made to contribute to the general safety […] The occupation of Shikapore by an efficient force, and the skilful improvement of its defences would be prominent objects […]

  Sgd Auckland

  Simla

  May 12th 1838

  A decision to go to war can seldom have been communicated less incisively. But you can dig out the key points from what is in full a very long document. Dost Mohammed is portrayed as an irredeemable enemy. Auckland orders the military occupation of Sind almost casually. Ranjit Singh is to be encouraged to invade Afghanistan to restore Shuja with British help, firstly if Herat falls, and secondly if Herat does not fall. A permanent British military advisory presence in Afghanistan is mooted. Divisions between Shia and Sunni are to be consciously exploited. Macnaghten will negotiate all this with Ranjit Singh, and nobody is to mention Russia.

  Auckland’s views had changed completely since his minute of 9 October 1837 when he had written:

  I am thoroughly convinced that it is for the best interests of Runjeet Singh himself that he should come to terms of proper accommodation with the Afghans.8

  There had been another key influence acting on Auckland – the Sikhs. On 1 May a large deputation, headed by Ranjit’s nephew Ajit Singh, had arrived at Simla and entered into intense negotiations over ten days with Auckland; Macnaghten was interpreter and adviser. The Sikhs departed on 11 May and on the 12th Auckland signed off his fateful minute setting the policy of deposing Dost Mohammed.9 Wade, Macnaghten and Colvin were present with Auckland as he drafted.

  Macnaghten was to negotiate with Ranjit Singh to turn the invasion of Afghanistan into reality. Macnaghten thought restoring Shah Shuja was the correct policy, in blunt contradiction of reports and arguments from Burnes. Why?

  Undoubtedly Wade was influential. Masson was also advising Macnaghten to replace Dost Mohammed with Shah Shuja.10 But there was another British officer with expertise on Afghanistan, who had been there before Burnes – Arthur Conolly.

  Conolly, like Burnes, thought highly of Dost. In his Journey to the North of India Overland he wrote:

  In bright contrast to these is Dost Mohummud Khan […] Albeit not formerly of a very good character, he is now widely famed for the excellence of his rule; and the inhabitants of Caubul […] would probably be sorry to see him supplanted […] [He] has followed a liberal line of policy, endeavouring to conciliate the nobles and all classes of the people; he enlists Dorraunees, and has brought under subjection the disaffected Ghilgies wit
hin his district. He affects the strictest forms of the Soonnee creed, while he is most tolerant to the many Sheeahs of Caubul […]

  Conolly put great stress on the Persian threat to Afghanistan. But his idea of how to strengthen Afghanistan against Persia was precisely opposite to that of Burnes. He argues:

  The Affghauns generally have in every way suffered so much from the revolution that they would hail the resumption of the royal authority, whether by Kamraun or by any other man of the family […] The rulers of petty Affghaun states cannot have the motives to oppose foreign invasion of India that would be felt by a monarch whose dignity and interests would in many way be associated with ours.11

  He wrote a lengthy paper on ‘The Overland Invasion of India’, carried in the influential Calcutta Courier on 1 and 2 July 1831. Conolly, working together with Trevelyan, played a key role in establishing Afghan policy. While Burnes was in England, Mohan Lal had re-attached himself to Trevelyan and had input into Conolly and Trevelyan’s work.12

  Conolly’s friends and family resented that he had not received the hero’s reception that awaited Burnes, whose journey was arguably less arduous than Conolly’s overland trek from St Petersburg to Calcutta. Conolly had not been to Kabul or Bokhara, but then Burnes had not been to Herat or Meshed.