Sikunder Burnes

by Craig Murray

  There were three weeks before the Shah actually withdrew, during which the Russians tried to change his mind (though the Shah refused to receive Witkiewicz),61 and Prince Kamran of Herat asked the Shah to help him assassinate his minister Yar Mohammed before he left.62 Finally, in a letter to Auckland dated ‘9 September 1838, 26 minutes past 10 o’clock AM’, Stoddart wrote ‘The Shah has now mounted his horse and is gone.’63

  With tragic consequences, Stoddart concluded that bullying was the best way to deal with oriental rulers. But the threat which had prompted the British invasion of Afghanistan had dissipated. Eldred Pottinger became a hero, credited with single-handedly stiffening the resistance of feckless Afghans, fighting off Russian attacks, and driving with the flat of his sword the evil and skulking wazir of Herat to fight on the ramparts. He was a prototype of muscular Christianity.

  This should be taken with a pinch of salt. It is improbable that a single Christian would have a profound effect on morale, especially when there was no shortage of Europeans on the other side. Pottinger was not even the only European in the Herat durbar. The Persian army was never able fully to invest Herat, and had powder and shot only infrequently, while provisions were much cheaper in the city than in the Persian camp.64 The siege was in general a desultory affair.

  The only evidence for Pottinger’s heroics was allegedly in his journals, which were the basis of the account of ‘The Hero of Herat’ by the doyen of British Indian historians Sir John Kaye. But this evidence disappeared in one of those infamous Victorian study fires, in which papers potentially embarrassing to the Imperial narrative were apt to vanish.65 It seems likely that this fire is where Alexander Burnes’ private diaries disappeared too, with their evidence of religious scepticism (and perhaps sexual adventure). Kaye published that ‘the journals and correspondence of Sir Alexander Burnes were given to me by his brother, the late Dr James Burnes’,66 but there, to my extreme frustration, the trail ends. The same conflagration took private papers of those martyr icons of Victorian India, Henry Lawrence and John Nicholson. It is very probable Kaye was deliberately destroying evidence of sexual and religious unorthodoxy.67

  While modern historians have not echoed the adulation of Eldred Pottinger, they have repeated the improbable story that Pottinger just happened to be in Herat when the Persians attacked, tootling around on leave. Even the meticulous M E Yapp described his presence in Herat as ‘fortuitous’ and ‘accidental’.68 This had been the cover story put out by the British, in the same way the Russians disavowed Witkiewicz.

  In fact, Eldred had been surveying the western passes and had proceeded to Herat in disguise on Burnes’ direct orders, who once the siege was under way wrote to Herat’s vizier certifying Eldred’s true identity, but did not formally attach him to his mission (giving diplomatic status) as ‘I do not wish to commit the government.’ Burnes ordered Eldred ‘to inspirit them in any way’.69 Burnes explained to Stoddart that the reason Pottinger had not been openly declared as a British agent, was that his role in Herat would breach the treaty obligation of non-interference in any conflict between Afghanistan and Persia.70

  The lands of Herat had been devastated, ravaged by soldiers and camp-followers. Eldred Pottinger remained under Burnes’ direct command. British agents in Kandahar had reported a new plan by Witkiewicz for the Dil Khan sirdars to take Herat, and Burnes considered this a more substantial danger than Persia, as the weakened Herat would be less inclined to resist a Sunni Afghan force. Burnes therefore, with Auckland’s authority, authorised Eldred Pottinger to plough in a lakh of rupees to repairing Herat’s defences.71

  Burnes had to swallow the unpleasant distinction of being cited by name as the man whose mission was the cause of war, in the manifesto published by Auckland to justify the invasion.

  Simla Declaration 1 October 1838

  Captain Burnes was deputed, towards the close of the year 1836, on a mission to Dost Mohammed Khan, the Chief of Cabool. The original objects of that officer’s mission were purely of a commercial nature. Whilst Captain Burnes, however, was on his journey to Cabool, information was received by the Governor General, that the troops of Dost Mohammed Khan had made a sudden and unprovoked attack upon those of our ancient ally, Maha Raja Runjeet Singh […] it was to be feared that the flames of war once kindled in the very regions into which we were endeavouring to extend our commerce, the peaceful and beneficial purposes of the British government would be altogether frustrated. In order to avert a result so calamitous, the Governor General resolved in authorising Captain Burnes to intimate to Dost Mohammed Khan that, if he should evince a disposition to come to just and reasonable terms with the Maha Raja, His Lordship would exert his good offices with His Highness for the restoration of an amicable understanding between the two powers […]

  Shah Shoojah-ul-Moolk will enter Afghanistan, surrounded by his own troops, and will be supported against foreign interference and factitious opposition by a British army. The Governor General confidently hopes, that the Shah will be speedily replaced on the throne by his own subjects and adherents, and when once he shall be secure in power, and the independence and integrity of Afghanistan established, the British Army will be withdrawn.

  The Governor General has been led to these measures by the duty which is imposed upon him, of providing for the security of the possessions of the British crown; but he rejoices that in the discharge of his duty he will be enabled to assist in restoring the union and property of the Afghan people […]

  This proclamation was tendentious. Peshawar had only been annexed for the Sikhs definitively (after a sacking in 1819) by Hari Singh in 1833. The Sikhs had no claim to Peshawar, which had been part of the Empire of Nadir Shah and then part of the Dourani Empire from 1747. Peshawar’s almost entirely Muslim population was engaged in continuing resistance. To characterise Dost’s attempt to recover Peshawar as an act of aggression was sheer distortion. Burnes was incensed by the hypocrisy of the British position, noting acerbically that we had not objected to Ranjit Singh’s attacks on the Afghans, and that ‘we had no desire to the flames of war in the abstract – it depended entirely on the party who kindled them whether we should fan or quench them’.72 What Burnes wanted was an ethical foreign policy that dealt fairly with the various parties. What he served was naked Imperial aggression.

  Mundane worries intruded. There is always an irresoluble conflict between the exigencies of spying and the needs of public accountancy. Payments for information, informal messengers, gifts, payments for supplies of provisions from locals who may be illiterate – all had somehow to be accounted for. A significant proportion of the manuscripts indexed under ‘Alexander Burnes’ in the National Archives of India consist of detailed querying of his accounts.

  To give but one example, in the midst of his vital negotiations with Dost, on 4 December 1837, Burnes sat down to submit his mission accounts for the period when his mission had been living largely on boats and travelling from Karachi to Sukkur. Burnes made no attempt to provide receipts, and instead wrote:

  Cabool

  4th December 1837

  Sir,

  I have the honour to forward statements of my actual receipts and disbursements for the months of January, February and March 1837, which I declare upon honour to be correct and according to the best of my knowledge.

  I have etc

  Alexr. Burnes

  On a Mission to Cabool

  To The Accountant General

  Fort William73

  On 10 October 1838 this was forwarded from Accountant General Charles Morley to the Secretary in Bombay, with a sniffy note:

  Sir,

  The Civil Authority having returned the accounts (noted in the margin) of the receipts and charges connected to Captain Burnes’ Mission to Cabool – unaudited, from the circumstance of their not having been approved […] I have the honor to forward them for the orders of His Honor the President in Council, together with a copy of a letter from Captain Burnes to my address […] which accompa
nied them.

  It will be observed that the charges exhibited in the accounts are unsupported by original receipts, or any other document than the declaration furnished in the conclusion of Captain Burnes’ communication before adverted to, and that the funds have been raised by Bills upon Presentation under the Bombay Presidency.74

  Bombay batted them straight back to Calcutta advising that they would need to be considered by Auckland himself:

  I have been directed […] to […] point out that the accounts having been rendered by Captain Burnes without vouchers it will be necessary if the Governor-General considers the charges to be moderate and warranted that His Lordship should authorize their being passed to Captain Burnes in account leaving receipts to be adjusted and checked by comparison with the accounts of the Treasury on which his bills were drawn.75

  It is not a small point. Empires live on their accounting – some of the oldest documents in the world are surviving accounts of Mesopotamian empires, indelibly inscribed on clay tablets. The commercial origins of the EIC made accounting even more central to its culture. The pressure on Burnes over accounts was a major worry; if the government repudiated his bills he could be ruined.

  Moorcroft and Gerard both died penniless for this very reason. Burnes had already lost money redeeming Gerard’s bills. Mohan Lal’s life was devastated by government refusing to refund payments made in the last days of the Kabul garrison. Edward Stirling’s expenses were turned down entirely. Stoddart’s Herat accounts were repudiated and many of Arthur Conolly’s bills remained unhonoured at his death. The entire story of the Great Game on the British side has this strange undercurrent.

  Back in high policy, Auckland wrote to Hobhouse on 15 November:

  The magnitude of the measure on which I am embarked is alarming even to myself, and it will be for others to pronounce whether I am attempting at too great a hazard and at too great an expense to establish and to maintain a British influence throughout the nations of Central Asia; or whether it would have been safer to leave Herat, Khiva, Cabul and Candahar either to the occupation of Russia or to the exercise of the political agency of that power, combined with Persia against us. I have looked upon my course to be strictly one of self-defence. I embarked in it most painfully and unwillingly, but having embarked I will, please God, manfully go through with it.76

  Auckland’s prediction of ‘too great a hazard and too great an expense’ was right on both counts. It is as though Auckland realised he was doing something stupid, but could not stop himself. He was implementing a policy strongly urged on him by Palmerston. The majority of the British Cabinet at the time were convinced of the reality of the Russian threat. Queen Victoria’s diary entry of a conversation with her Prime Minister is revealing:

  We were seated much as usual; Lord Melbourne sitting near me. He said ‘You should see those Indian papers, to see what Auckland’s about’ […] he said […] there was going to be a great war […] a struggle between Russia and England, which is to have possession in the East. We depend upon Runjeet Singh, who has always been our friend, and who he says we have no reason to doubt; but he is very old; ‘he has an army of 70,000 disciplined troops,’ Lord M. said; ‘he is a Hindoo and not a Mahomedan, and won’t allow any cows to be killed […]’ ‘One can understand the origin of it,’ said Lord M., ‘the Cow being the mother of the Calf and giving milk; I have no doubt that’s the origin, and with the Egyptians the same’[…]

  Lord M. then talked again of these Indian papers which he said I couldn’t read through […] ‘There’ll be an immense crisis; it’s coming to a crash in Central Asia; I dare say it’ll be staved off for the present,’ but must come to something hereafter, to be decided whether England or Russia should reign there […]’77

  Melbourne immediately went on to flirt with Victoria, saying that young men might go for blondes but more mature men like himself preferred black hair. Making every allowance for age, Victoria’s lack of curiosity at being told the country she ruled was about to go to war with Russia is startling: she accepted advice not to read the papers.

  The portion of the army designated as being Shah Shuja’s own forces were in composition not significantly different from the Company’s regiments, from which the officers were seconded. The men were recruited during 1838 in Bengal and Oude from the same classes as the Bengal Native troops, with the addition of a battalion of Gurkhas.

  The British officers viewed Shah Shuja’s regiments as weak. Recruitment was hardly an attractive proposition, as an officer wrote:

  Time did not allow the selection to be very good and […] I fear it will be many a day before the troops will be much use […] firstly […] only a couple of months being given to raise so large a body in; secondly the knowledge that they were destined to fight against a race celebrated throughout the East for bravery and fanaticism; and thirdly and above all their being immediately marched into a country where […] the snow was known to lie some four months in the year.78

  Company sepoys normally underwent a full year of hard drill before even being allowed to join the ranks.79 The Shah’s forces were given just six weeks’ training.

  On 27 November Auckland and Ranjit Singh met at Ferozepore to review the troops, and again the lavish spectacle of a meeting between the Maharaja and a Governor-General was played out, amid tented splendour. There were manoeuvres, salvoes, jewels, fireworks, presents and dancing girls. The baptist Henry Havelock did not approve:

  The time will […] come in India when national custom will be no longer pleaded as an excuse for the introduction […] of groups of dancing and choral prostitutes […] into the presence of the ladies of the family of the British Governor-General.80

  His solicitude was misplaced. Emily Eden enjoyed seeing prostitutes, and complained on occasions when they were cleared away.

  There should have been stark reason to worry about their Sikh ally’s stability, and thus the possibility of the supply chain collapsing behind them. With Ranjit visibly failing, claimants to the Sikh throne were lobbying senior British officers for support in the coming succession struggle. On Christmas Eve, Ranjit collapsed with a stroke; he was never able to speak clearly again.

  Burnes now wrote a long letter to John Cam Hobhouse arguing that the spread of Russian influence was a real danger. The best and cheapest way to counter this would once have been to back Dost Mohammed. The only way forward now was a wholehearted commitment to imposing Shuja. Hobhouse had throughout supported Burnes; there was no change now.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Securing Sind

  Henry Pottinger was now Resident in Haidarabad, and was deeply concerned about the tribute to Shah Shuja demanded from Sind. The Amirs told him that, in return for their financial contribution towards his campaign of 1833/4, Shuja had renounced all future claims. Pottinger expostulated to Auckland:

  The question of money-payment by the Amirs of Sindh to Shah Soojah-ool-Moolk is […] rendered very puzzling by two releases written in Korans, and sealed and signed by His Majesty […] Their argument now is, that they are sure the Governor-General does not intend to make them pay again for what they have already bought.

  The reply to Pottinger was blunt: the Amirs must pay up or be deposed, plus a British subsidiary force would be garrisoned upon them for which the Amirs must annually pay the British 3 lakhs. This was the usual means in British India of initiating the takeover of a new state – ‘subsidiary’ meaning that the British force was subsidised by the host rulers.

  The Amirs would be permanently barred from communication with other states – i.e. Britain would control foreign policy. Again this was usual in British takeover of new territory. The failure of the ruler to pay the subsidy in a bad harvest year, or ‘treasonous’ correspondence with other rulers, became the pretext for full annexation. The Amirs were acutely aware of this repeating pattern.

  The Amirs were Shias, and therefore Calcutta feared a possible Persian alliance. The British now worked on the Shia/Sunni divide. One of th
e Amirs, Sobdar, was a Sunni and Macnaghten instructed Pottinger that Sobdar should be excused his share of the ‘tribute’: Britain should retain the policy option of deposing all the other Amirs and replacing them with Sobdar.

  Auckland wrote to the Amirs specifying his demands, citing Article 4 of the bilateral treaty of 1834 between Singh and Shuja as the legal basis of British intervention:

  Regarding Shikarpore and the territory of Scinde lying on the right bank of the Indus, the Shah will agree to abide by whatever may be settled as right and proper, in conformity with the happy relations of friendship subsisting between the British Government and the Maharajah, through Captain Wade.

  After Shuja’s defeat at Kandahar, Lord Bentinck had specifically repudiated this clause as unauthorised. Britain now depended on it for its legal ‘right’ to take over Shikarpur. Burnes delegated Mohan Lal to arrange with the Lohanis for money and provisions to be taken to Shikarpur.

  Burnes was negotiating in Upper Sind with his old friend Rustam Khan of Khairpur, having arrived there by boat on 25 October 1838.1 By 6 November he had already sent six despatches to Auckland and received approval in principle of treaty outlines.2 The vital objective was to secure the fortress at Baikhar; the major part of the allied army was to cross the Indus here. Rustam Khan’s demands for money were comparatively slight. But he, like his Talpur cousins at Haidarabad and Bhawalpur, was smarting from Britain’s cursory notification that it was abrogating the provision of the April 1832 treaty which said the Indus would not be used for military transport.