Sikunder Burnes

by Craig Murray

  Since his first meeting with Burnes seven years previously, Rustam had wanted Khairpur to become a British protectorate. Burnes could finally grant this. However, it became obvious to Rustam that Haidarabad was contemplating armed resistance, and he sought to temporise. To surrender the famous fortress of Baikhar might bring him obloquy throughout the Islamic world. The British plan of invasion was dependent upon the convergence of the Bengal and Bombay contingents at Sukkur, and that meant obtaining the fortress. If agreement could not be reached with Rustam, then full-scale war with a united Sind would follow.

  War brought out a new side of Burnes’ personality. Rustam had previously seen only the affable traveller and envoy. Burnes could also threaten. He sent a message to the Bengal Division which was on the way from Ferozepore to Sukkur, stating that Rustam may not cede the fortress ‘in which case you must attack and take it […]3 Rustam gave numerous reasons that the British Army should not pass through. The harvest had been poor, the time of year was wrong, crops would be destroyed by the army before they could be harvested.

  Burnes stood with Rustam on the banks of the Indus and pointed to the mighty river rolling by. The British army was coming, he said. They had as much chance of damming the great Indus as of stopping it. The Amir believed him. Still there was much opposition from Rustam’s court; Burnes and Mohan Lal hit on a stratagem. Burnes left Khairpur under the pretext of looking for alternative crossing points, taking the vizier and Rustam’s brothers with him. In his absence Mohan Lal browbeat Rustam into signing in a dramatic all-night session into the morning of 24 December.

  Burnes was riven by internal conflict. He wrote privately of his anguish at mistreating his friend Rustam.4 At the same time, he gloried in his success. He missed his gung-ho friend Lord, and on 1 January 1839 wrote to him: ‘I have been travelling to Khyrpore, treaty-making on a grand scale, and […] I have got the fortress of Bukkur ceded to us on our own terms […] the Khyrpore State to place itself under British protection […] All these great doings happened at Christmas, and I only wanted your hilarious tones to make the enjoyment of the day complete.’

  Auckland had spent Christmas with Ranjit at Firozepore, Lahore and Amritsar. Burnes sent a message announcing success at Khairpur to Willoughby Cotton commanding the Bengal Contingent, and Henry Fane who was travelling alongside it with his suite on seven large river barges. The river party included Wood and Masson, though the latter had no official capacity. The Bengal Contingent pressed on through Ahmedpur and Khanpur to join Burnes, who met them on the boundary of the Khairpur territory. He warned Cotton and Fane that there may still be resistance to ceding the crossing.

  At Sabzalkot Burnes mentioned to Masson that Leech had not made much progress in securing provisions from Kelat. Masson asked to be appointed to serve in Kelat. He recorded, ‘Sir Alexander held down his head, and made no reply.’5 Burnes had made great efforts to get Masson employment, but had been blocked. Masson wrongly suspected Burnes of thwarting him and railed against Burnes to anybody who would listen. This common hatred helped cement his friendship with Henry Pottinger, with whom he went to stay for several months.

  They received the first communication from the Bombay force under Sir John Keane. It had landed by sea near Vikkur, and was stuck until baggage animals could be brought up from Cutch, while the Haidarabad Amirs had refused to give any help, and had called up their levies of 25,000 men.

  Better news was that Shuja and his newly-raised forces had already crossed the Indus by boats and were establishing themselves at Shikarpur. Having briefed the commanders, Burnes galloped back to Rustam. The engineers were already building the bridge of boats across the river, but Rustam insisted nobody could cross until he had received the treaty ratified by Auckland. There was still concern Rustam might change his mind.

  The Bengal contingent encamped near Rustam Khan and his force of 8,000 men. Burnes with Mohan Lal and his attendants had a separate camp by the river. The next morning, a delegation led by Rustam Khan’s wazir – a fierce anti-British nationalist – called on Sir Henry Fane, and ‘Sir A. Burnes acted as interpreter, and conducted the negotiation and ceremonial, and displayed admirable tact […] by which he contrived to inspire with confidence.’6 Burnes now started a close friendship with an aide de camp of Cotton, the teetotal, tactless and much passed-over Henry Havelock, a Lieutenant for fifteen years, and hidden military genius.

  Burnes was also on excellent terms with both Fane and Cotton. Sir Willoughby Cotton was perfectly fitted to his name. A fat trencherman, he was very popular with the Sikhs for his drinking abilities. In his youth he had led the famous ‘Rugby mutiny’, blowing up the Headmaster’s study with gunpowder.7 But Cotton was no fool and had fought through the entire Peninsular campaign.

  Burnes now joined Shuja’s force at Shikarpur, spending two weeks with Lord, who had established a foundry and was engaged in ‘casting cannon, forging muskets, raising troops, horse and foot, talking, persuading, bullying, threatening and bribing’.8 Burnes recruited several hundred Afghan irregular cavalry – mercenaries were beginning to arrive at the prospect of employment. These irregulars did not form part of the disciplined force. On 25 January Burnes left Lord and rode back to join Cotton at Baikhar.9

  On 26 January 1839 the ratified treaty arrived. On 27 January Burnes put on the uniform of a British Colonel. With Mohan Lal, he rode out to Rustam’s camp, to escort him to hand over the keys. Fane and Cotton seated themselves in a great scarlet and gold tented pavilion to receive Rustam, with an avenue of cavalry drawn up along the approach. Facing them rose groves of date palms through which Burnes and the Sindian delegation were expected to emerge. But hours dragged by with no rustling in the palms. Eventually a huge Sindian crowd on horseback started to filter out, with Burnes, Mohan Lal and a grave, grey-bearded Rustam Khan at the front. No sooner had they come in sight than they stopped, and were engaged in visible altercation. Then the cavalcade started forward again, stopping several more times before finally arriving at the pavilion. In fact Burnes had been involved in heated discussion for many hours with Rustam, cajoling him into handing over the fortress as the only safe way to secure his rule, while the vizier and others argued forcefully against such treachery to Sind.

  Once they arrived, things were not made easier by Fane’s abrupt manner: he simply handed over the treaty to Rustam and demanded the keys. His receipt of Rustam’s presents was ‘perfunctory’ and Fane baldly told him that ‘I have wasted enough time in treating. I will now march down and attack [Haidarabad]; and if you like I shall show you the troops I shall send to do it.’10 He then took a rather shell-shocked Rustam, ‘a man of portly, rather comely, and very venerable appearance, and soft and courteous manners’ on a review of the troops.

  It took a further two days of cajoling for Burnes to get physical possession of the castle keys. Armed with these, Burnes, Fane and Cotton, with a small cloud of staff officers and a sepoy escort of the 35th NI, crammed into eight small boats commanded by John Wood and crossed to the fortress. They were aware that Rustam’s move was unpopular with many of his nobles, and were unsure if all would pass peacefully, but on approach saw the bulk of the garrison leave the island fortress by boat. Burnes ‘sprung ashore’ and opened the door of the fortress with the great key.11

  A troop of Rustam’s men remained with the British garrison; but from the keep was unfurled a large Union Jack, to the cheers of the sepoys. Burnes wrote of his unabashed national pride; he had years earlier identified Baikhar as ‘the key to the Indus’, and now he had its key in his hands. The union flag flew there for over a hundred years. Havelock’s judgement is correct: ‘The negotiations of Sir Alexander Burnes which ended in the surrender of Fort Bukkur without a shot, deserve to be classed with the ablest efforts of British diplomacy.’

  Getting an army across the river was no easy feat. James Broadfoot, a young engineer officer from Kirkwall, gave a vivid description:

  We were on the bank of a river 1,100 yards wide, with a torrent
like a mill stream […] First we seized, by great exertion, about 120 boats, then cut down lots of trees; these we made into strong beams […] we made 500 cables out of a peculiar kind of grass which grows 100 miles from here; the anchors were made of small trees joined and loaded with stone. Out nails were all made on the spot. We then anchored the boats in the middle of the stream […] leaving twelve feet between each; strong beams were laid across the boats, and planks nailed on these for a roadway. This is the largest military bridge which has ever been made.12

  Remarkably this was completed between 26 January and 8 February 1839, despite the timber having to be felled at Ferozepore and drifted downstream. Lieutenant Wood played a major part, identifying and seizing every boat on 120 miles of river and advising on the construction. After completion Wood was appointed in charge of the bridge.13

  Burnes’ achievement at Sukkur stirred up renewed enmity from Henry Pottinger. Pottinger argued that Khairpur must be treated as subordinate to Haidarabad. It followed that Burnes’ position as Envoy to Khairpur should be subordinate to Pottinger as Envoy to Haidarabad. Auckland did not support Pottinger in this view.

  Pottinger’s ex-assistant had moved, in a few weeks, from brevet Captain to Lieutenant Colonel Sir Alexander Burnes, and had then taken away some of Pottinger’s territorial responsibility. Pottinger chose to believe that Burnes had not gained control of the crossing at Sukkur, but was being duped and wrote gleefully to Burnes, copying in Auckland, that Rustam Khan was in secret correspondence with his cousin Nur Mohammed at Haidarabad.14 In fact Burnes was well aware that Rustam was playing a double game, but was confident that he would come down on the British side. It was Nur Mohammed, not Burnes, who was being played along by Rustam.

  Burnes and Pottinger were forced to consult closely over the negotiations in Upper and Lower Sind respectively, with periods of sending daily letters. Pottinger remained bitterly opposed to separate discussions at Khairpur. His letter to Burnes of 29 October 1838 said: ‘I have given the chief topic of your three letters the most mature and full consideration […] I am unable to concur in the view you take on the advisability of confirming […] the treaty which you have sent to me.’15

  Pottinger wrote again to Auckland arguing that Khairpur was subordinate to Haidarabad; as Resident in Sind, he could fix an assistant at Khairpur any time he pleased, and offer a treaty. Rustam Khan and his court ‘were assuming a tone of equality and dignity totally opposed to their relative stations to the British government’. Pottinger was unable mentally to process the fact that Burnes was no longer junior to him. The treaty Burnes had negotiated was initiated in the Governor-General’s office. So Pottinger was effectively criticising Auckland.

  The Governor-General now instructed Pottinger to step up the pressure on the Amirs at Haidarabad. Their continued correspondence with Persia (little more than routine diplomatic compliments), their failure to provide supplies and carriage to Keane, and their refusal to acknowledge the suzerainty of Shah Shuja, proved them to be ‘disloyal’; a peculiar adjective as they had no loyalty to the British. Pottinger was to broadcast that the British had a candidate for the Sind throne, from the old Kalora dynasty, overthrown two generations previously. Pottinger was soon suggesting that it was already time to depose the principal Amir. Auckland replied in the pained tone he adopted with Pottinger:

  The Governor General is hardly disposed to concur entirely in [your] opinion […] that the circumstances specified […] however clearly they demonstrate the want of all honor and honesty in […] Noor Mahomed Khan, are such as to place that chief at our mercy. Should […] he evince a disposition to meet our just and necessary views, the Governor General would be unwilling to proceed to extremities.16

  Nur Mohammed would avoid deposition only if he complied with all British demands, including supply of transport and provisions for Keane’s corps, payment of a subsidy to maintain a permanent British force at Ferozepore, and the massive payment of thirty-three lakhs (over £300,000), supposedly arrears of tribute to Shuja, but to be divided between the British and Ranjit. On the 1834 agreement to end the tribute, Auckland’s reply was Machiavellian:

  The Governor General refrained for the present from recording any opinion relative to the releases which His Majesty Shah Shuja is said to have executed. Admitting the documents […] imply a relinquishment of all claim to tribute, still they would hardly appear to be applicable to present circumstances […] His Majesty would [not] have foregone so valuable a claim without that some counterpart agreement should have been taken the unfulfilment of the terms of which, may have rendered null and void His Majesty’s engagement.

  Pottinger was much affronted by an ‘impertinent’ Khairpur envoy who queried the tribute demand, stating: ‘it is a joke talking of it as the demand of the King, you have given him bread for the last five and twenty years, and any strength he has now, and may hereafter have, proceeds from you, so the demand is literally yours’.17 But Rustam Khan had already sold the crossing, and the Haidarabad Amirs were also betrayed by Mehrab Khan of Kelat. Burnes was Envoy to Kelat, and he despatched Robert Leech there to negotiate for passage of British forces, and supply of provisions and transport. Mehrab Khan had received a letter from the Haidarabad Amirs, inviting him to join their armies to resist the coming British invasion. Instead he gave the Haidarabad letter to Leech, who sent it to Burnes. Pottinger raised it with Nur Mohammed, who denied its authenticity.

  Although Mehrab was willing to warn the British against his rivals, he was not willing to assist the British invasion of Afghanistan, with which Kelat had a treaty of mutual defence. Eventually Burnes reached a deal with the wazir of Kelat, Muhammad Hussan, at Shikarpur, that the Khanate would sell provisions to the British and make route preparations. It was a sign of impending trouble that this man of intrigue warned Burnes of the alleged bad faith of his ruler, Mehrab Khan.

  Pottinger was now writing sanguinely to Auckland about the possibility of war, and travelled to arrange provisions for Keane’s force in a march upon Haidarabad. He felt, however, that the Amirs would surrender: ‘The decided and unvaried language I have held to them has satisfied them that we will take, if they will not give, a passage through their country.’18

  He worried that the taking of Baikhar fortress would infuriate Haidarabad and lead to his own murder. His party had been subject to stone-throwing and Pottinger now refused to leave his house.

  Auckland rebuked both Pottinger and Burnes for their disputes:

  the Governor-General deeply regrets the tone which pervades your letter to the address of Lieutenant Colonel Sir A Burnes dated the 2nd Inst., and that officer’s reply dated the 5th. His Lordship feels satisfied, that you will both on reflection, regret the use of expressions having the remotest tendency to irritation, and that at a crisis like the present when interests of such magnitude are entrusted to your charge, you will recognize the necessity of acting with cordial concert.19

  Overwrought, Pottinger sent a quite extraordinary complaint to Auckland in which all his pent-up hatred of Burnes came tumbling out in a rant against the Khairpur treaty. It consists of eleven large pages, closely written. It was a bad misjudgement of Pottinger to believe that, with a war just starting, Auckland would welcome this. Pottinger opens by a lengthy reference to his historic disagreements with Burnes in Bhuj, and bitterly attacks Sir Robert Grant, former Governor of Bombay – a deceased friend of Auckland.

  This letter was written at precisely the time Pottinger was refusing to leave his Residence for fear of assassination: he had probably suffered some kind of breakdown. A few paragraphs will give the general tone:

  When your Lordship did me the honor to nominate me to be Resident in Sinde, I neither anticipated that I was to be colleagued with Lt Colonel Sir Alexander Burnes, nor that that officer was to criticise […] my dispatches, still less did I imagine that he […] was to avail himself of his Lordship’s instructions to me, as one of the means of carrying his own objects, even before these instructions could re
ach me […]

  [W]hen Sir Alexander Burnes was appointed to go as Envoy to Kabool, he was placed […] under my guidance so far as Sinde was concerned […] he waited until he had just crossed the frontier of this province, and then addressed direct to government a dispatch, impugning all my measures […] It was an easy task for me to refute what he then set forth […]

  Again, Sir Alexander Burnes […] talked of the facility I must have in negotiating his Bills, in the face of all I had so frequently written to him to the contrary. In another, he […] asserted that I could get as many pack bullocks as might be required for the force from certain villages in Kutch […] I […] ask myself, what Your Lordship would have thought of me if I had not explained the unsoundness of the statements. Surely Your Lordship would have remarked ‘Colonel Pottinger must be strangely apathetical, and neglectful […]’ […]

  If Sir Alexander Burnes really thought his opinions were likely to weigh with me, he laboured under a sad mistake. They never did so […] Had the highest and oldest political functionary in India addressed this letter to me […] I would deem it a piece of presumptuous and uncalled-for vanity, and I have no milder term to apply, when I think of the author of it […]20

  The reply from Auckland was drafted and signed by his Assistant Secretary, T H Maddock, and while not exonerating Burnes, plainly shows a preference to him:

  it is with exceeding pain that Auckland has learnt that such feelings have been excited on your part […] He has to tender to you the warmest acknowledgements and thanks for the result of your recent negotiations […]

  At the same time, His Lordship does not feel that it would be just or proper to mark with any extreme censure the part taken by Sir Alexander Burnes in pressing his own opinions for the consideration of government […] He regards the letter addressed to you by Sir Alexr. Burnes on 27 December to have been certainly unsuitable and uncalled for. Yet it related to a topic of a very emergent nature, affecting the success of all His Lordship’s plans, and the Governor-General cannot ascribe it to any other source than a pure, even though over-ardent, sense of public duty […]