Koh-i-Noor

by William Dalrymple

  Other than Ranjit Singh himself, Beli Ram was the only man in the kingdom permitted to handle the Koh-i-Noor. Twisting the long pearl-embellished tassels of the diamond’s elaborate mount around his fingers, Beli Ram treated the Koh-i-Noor as if it was a living, dangerous bird of prey. When the maharaja visited the far reaches of his kingdom, Beli Ram took care of the most sensitive arrangements. He hid the Koh-i-Noor in a plain unobtrusive casket, and placed two exact glass replicas in two identical caskets. These boxes would be loaded on to different camels in Ranjit Singh’s heavily guarded train. Nobody but Beli Ram knew which camel carried the real diamond.18 If they struck camp for the night, the three caskets were chained to Beli Ram’s bed. Thieves who might break through the tight rings of security outside his tent would then have to cut all three boxes free to be sure they got the right gem. Not that it ever came to it, but Beli Ram would have slit their throats before they got near his master’s diamond.

  So loyal was Beli Ram to the maharaja that he managed to alienate the most powerful and dangerous man in the kingdom. Punjab’s vizier, or prime minister, Raja Dhian Singh, had once asked for a selection of crown jewels to be sent to his home, wishing to impress some visiting dignitaries. Dhian Singh knew better than to include the Koh-i-Noor in his request; nevertheless Beli Ram flatly refused, telling Dhian Singh to produce written permission from the maharaja first. The vizier’s rage at such insolence was supressed but never forgotten. Four years later, with Maharaja Ranjit Singh gone, Dhian Singh would take his revenge, imprisoning Beli Ram and his brothers in his stables, chaining them up like animals, starving and beating them for days, only to have them strangled one by one when he tired of the torture.

  In 1839, however, as ‘A Voice’ goaded his countrymen into making a move on the Koh-i-Noor, Beli Ram was at the height of his powers. His master might have been dead, but his sense of duty was very much alive and Beli Ram was all that stood between the diamond and the Jagannath temple. In a move that was completely out of keeping with his loyalty to his king, Beli Ram failed to honour Ranjit Singh’s dying bequest. With the curses of the Jagannath priests ringing in his ears, he hid the Koh-i-Noor in his vaults and refused to send it to Orissa. Though he knew he might be accused of stealing the gem and insulting his master, Beli Ram’s strong belief in the ancient principle of Chakravartin19 gave him the strength to resist men, priests and even their gods. Dating back to the Mauryan Empire (322–185 BCE), Chakravartin encapsulated a code of kingship that obliged monarchs to rule benevolently. Centuries before Machiavelli was dispensing his own brand of cunning to Italian princes, an Indian emperor named Chandragupta Maurya was setting out his own Chakravartin philosophy, according to which it was the crown and not the king that mattered.

  In Beli Ram’s mind, the rules of Chakravartin made the Koh-i-Noor a jewel of state, an emblem of power, not the personal property of the Lion of Punjab or his anointed cub. Beli Ram therefore could not in all conscience honour the Jagannath bequest. The Koh-i-Noor belonged to Punjab and in Punjab it would stay, ready to be worn on the bicep of the next maharaja, whoever he might be. Of course it helped that Kharak Singh, the crown prince, and Raja Dhian Singh had also made their wishes abundantly clear: the Koh-i-Noor should, under no circumstances, leave Lahore.20

  The thirty-seven-year-old Kharak Singh might have been the eldest of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s eight sons, but he was also the least able. The physician John Martin Honigberger despised him even more than he did Ranjit Singh, describing his coronation on 1 September 1839 as a dark day: ‘Kurruck Sing ascended the Guddee [throne], who, besides being a blockhead, was a worse opium eater than his father. Twice a day he deprived himself of his senses and passed his whole time in a state of stupefaction.’21

  Though his coronation came later, Kharak Singh had assumed the title of maharaja immediately after his father’s funeral in June 1839, and proceeded to gorge himself on the trappings of power. He threw lavish parties, got drunk for days on end, ignored his vizier (the unforgiving Dhian Singh) and alienated the most powerful nobles in his realm. The religious Khalsa grew to despise his louche behaviour, and they were not alone. The new maharaja’s generals and advisers were also disgusted with him, more because of his inability to focus on matters of state than because of his love of drugs, drink and dancing girls. A plan was hatched, just four months into his reign, to murder Kharak Singh.

  Sapheeda kaskaree (white lead) and rus camphor (a compound of mercury) made their way into the maharaja’s daily food and wine.22 At first, the poison simply mimicked drunkenness, and Kharak Singh’s speech became a little more slurred than usual, and his co-ordination clumsier for longer periods of time. Then the maharaja started to go blind as some kind of mysterious and merciless itch took over his body. Within weeks, Kharak Singh’s joints burned with pain, and bleeding skin lesions opened up all over his body. Six months after the poisoning began, his organs started to shut down. Confined to his bed, Kharak Singh lay in unremitting agony, waiting to die.

  The slow murder took eleven months in all, during which time Kharak Singh’s eighteen-year-old son, Nau Nihal Singh, was recalled to the capital. A handsome young man and a brave soldier, Nau Nihal had little experience of court politics, and had been forced by his father’s incapacity to return to Lahore and govern in his name under the direction of the vizier. Though it was never proven, most believed that same man, Dhian Singh, to be the mastermind behind the poison plot.

  There was no suggestion, however, that Nau Nihal had any hand in his father’s murder, although he did behave callously towards him. While he clung yet to life, Kharak Singh begged to see his son every day. But, as Honigberger noted tersely, the crown prince rarely visited his father. When death finally came to Kharak Singh on 5 November 1840, it was a mercy. The official announcement blamed a sudden mysterious illness, making no mention of the months of suffering that had passed. It seemed to Honigberger that nobody really missed the dead king or questioned the manner of his death.

  Once again, the foreign physician found himself with a ringside seat at a Punjabi state funeral. Describing the event curtly in his memoirs, Honigberger said: ‘Three of his wives were burnt with him; and I was present at that horrid, yet remarkable spectacle …’23 Eleven slave girls also burned to death that day, but Honigberger, perhaps inured to the horror of sati now, failed even to mention them.

  As Kharak Singh had lit his own father’s pyre, so Nau Nihal performed the last rites for Kharak Singh. In contrast to his father, he looked every inch a king as he did so. Popular with the court and the masses, he had already proven himself a natural leader during his father’s ‘sickness’. Though only eighteen, he possessed a maturity beyond his years, and to those who had longed for leadership, Nau Nihal seemed worthy to wear the Koh-i-Noor.

  As his father burned, the new maharaja led his courtiers, including Honigberger, to the river Ravi, ‘to perform their ablutions, according to the custom of the country …’24 Unnoticed, the doctor took the opportunity to slip away. He had tolerated Punjab’s ‘horrid’ rituals for long enough and one of his patients needed his attention. Back at home, barely had he commenced his examination when a pageboy arrived from the palace in a state of great agitation. Nau Nihal and his companions had been returning from the river to the palace via the Hazuri Bagh, a tranquil garden built in 1818 by Ranjit Singh to celebrate the capture of the Koh-i-Noor. As the royal party passed beneath the Hazuri Bagh gate, a large elaborate structure, a heavy block of stone had fallen mysteriously from the archway. The masonry had struck Nau Nihal and two of his companions, killing one of them on the spot. Nau Nihal, thankfully, was not badly hurt, and according to the page had walked away from the scene.

  Honigberger grabbed his box of balms and rushed to the palace, expecting to attend to a shaken, slightly bruised young maharaja. Instead, ashen-faced nobles greeted him. Raja Dhian Singh, the vizier, beckoned Honigberger to follow:

  The minister conducted me to a tent, where I saw the prince; but he enjoined me, i
n the most energetic manner, not to speak about that event to anyone. The prince was on his bed, his head most awfully crushed, and his state was such that no hope of his recovery existed. With that conviction I left the tent, and whispered to the minister, in so low a tone that no one else could hear it, ‘Medical art can do nothing to relieve this unfortunate prince.’

  The circumstances of Nau Nihal’s ‘accident’ were far from clear, and eyewitness reports varied wildly. It had been the vizier’s own nephew who was killed instantly by the falling masonry, and in contrast to the page’s account, Dhian Singh swore that Nau Nihal’s grievous injuries were also sustained in the Hazuri Bagh just like his nephew’s. Alexander Gardner, an American mercenary-turned-artillery colonel in Ranjit Singh’s army, told a very different story.25 Gardner had been just a few steps behind the prince when the structure collapsed, and his own men had stretchered the wounded Nau Nihal to the palace. As Gardner told it, the prince was conscious and well enough to walk away, asking for water. Only upon Gardner’s insistence was he stretchered to his bed.

  What Honigberger saw shortly afterwards was not a man capable of walking or even talking. Nau Nihal’s skull had caved in and the sheets were covered with blood and brain tissue. So severe were his injuries that he died hours later, though the news was kept from the people for three days. While sandalwood was collected in secret for his pyre, nobles in the durbar scrambled to fill the empty gaddi or throne before panic took hold in a rudderless Punjab.26

  When news of the ‘freak accident’ finally got out three days later, Gardner fanned speculation by reporting that of the five artillerymen who had carried Nau Nihal to his bed, two died in mysterious circumstances, two asked for leave and never came back, and one simply and inexplicably disappeared. Nau Nihal, like his father before him, seemed to be the victim of surreptitious regicide.

  As Punjab prepared itself for yet another royal funeral, the third in two years, thoughts turned towards the Koh-i-Noor. Its violent history, coupled with the belief that the diamond was in fact the Syamantaka stone, the gem of the gods, had always linked the diamond with dark powers in the minds of Indians. According to ancient Hindu scripture, the gem rained misfortune on unworthy mortal custodians. The Koh-i-Noor may have overlooked the great Lion, but it seemed intent on picking off his weaker heirs one by one.

  On 9 November 1840 Nau Nihal was cremated and two of his teenage wives went with his body to the flames. His eldest wife, in the early stages of pregnancy, was spared. Another young girl was also saved from the fire when Nau Nihal’s uncle, Sher Singh, interceded on her behalf. Honigberger recorded the incident: ‘Two beautiful young ladies became victims of the flames with him [Nau Nihal Singh]. One female of the age of twelve years was detained … owing to her not yet being ripe for the ceremony of suttee …’

  The child’s saviour, Sher Singh, was the half-brother of Kharak Singh. Stout and striking, with a thick jet-black beard and piercing glare, he had the authority to pull a child from the pyre, but not to stake his own claim to the throne and the Koh-i-Noor. Now, as he watched his young nephew Nau Nihal burn, Sher Singh might have been forgiven a degree of satisfaction.

  7

  The Boy King

  One of twins, Sher Singh was the second eldest son of Ranjit, born in 1807, five years after the now dead Kharak Singh. Minutes separated Sher Singh from his twin brother Tara, but an abyss lay between both boys and the throne of Punjab. Their mother, Maharani Mehtab, had been betrothed to Ranjit Singh when she was four and he only six years of age. She had been named Mehtab, the Persian for ‘light of the moon’, because of her fair, clear complexion. Her charm made her seem mismatched for the skinny, rough boy Ranjit Singh, who had already lost an eye and been scarred by smallpox. Nevertheless, they were married in 1796.

  The marriage was not a happy one. Mehtab Kaur, a proud woman born to rich parents, found that Ranjit Singh paid her scant attention, spending the decade after his marriage battling to become the undisputed maharaja of all Punjab. His one eye had also taken to wandering: as the maharaja took more lovers, a humiliated Mehtab returned to her mother’s estates in Batala, sixty miles north-east of the capital. Though Ranjit Singh continued to visit Mehtab at his in-laws’ home, the couple were, to all intents and purposes, estranged. In the years that followed, Ranjit Singh married several other women and kept a large harem of beautiful girls. When Kharak Singh was born to his other wife Datar Kaur, Mehtab’s mother urged her to reconcile with her husband. The new baby threatened her position in court, and the fortunes of Mehtab’s entire family rested on her favour with the maharaja.

  The reconciliation must have worked, because in 1803 Mehtab gave birth to a child, Ishar Singh. However the boy died soon after his first birthday. Distraught, Mehtab was pushed again by her mother to woo the maharaja. By this time, seduction was no easy task. Ranjit Singh was now captivated by a beautiful Muslim dancing girl called Mauran, who seemed to have eclipsed all others in his affections. Nevertheless, three long years later Mehtab finally fell pregnant, giving birth to twin boys, Sher Singh and Tara Singh. Despite the double good fortune, jubilation in Batala was short lived.

  Vicious rumours drowned out the babies’ first cries. There were allegations that Mehtab had conceived a daughter and secretly given her away, knowing that a girl would have no claim to the throne. She stood accused of taking two commoner children in the girl’s place, one the baby of a weaver, the other of a carpenter. True or not, Ranjit Singh refused to acknowledge the boys as his legitimate heirs. However, he chose not to disown them either: though they would live as princes of Punjab, Ranjit Singh’s rebuking silence meant that neither Sher Singh nor his brother would ever be king. They were condemned by their father to grow up rich, powerful but ultimately shamed.

  At the sudden death of Nau Nihal, the durbar split. One faction proclaimed Sher Singh the rightful heir and the other positioned itself behind Nau Nihal Singh’s mother and Kharak Singh’s widow, the dowager Maharani Chand Kaur. It was hoped she might hold the throne till Nau Nihal Singh’s pregnant wife gave birth to a son. When a baby boy emerged six months later, he was stillborn, and as grief overwhelmed his mother, panic gripped Lahore. The dowager maharani ordered the gates of the capital locked, realising that her personal tragedy would now embolden Sher Singh. The cloud over his legitimacy might have marred his chances before, but as the eldest living son of Ranjit Singh, with no Nau Nihal line to thwart him, his way now seemed clear. It also helped that he had a fully mobilised army at his disposal. In desperation, Chand Kaur called an emergency meeting of the aristocratic families of Lahore, and begged them to support her as ruler of the Sikh Empire, but it was too late. Even as the nobles debated their options, Sher Singh was on the move.

  He had left his estate in Batala as soon as news of the stillbirth reached him. A 70,000-strong army marched behind Sher Singh and, upon finding the gates of the citadel locked, they laid siege to Lahore. For five days, Batala troops looted and terrorised the bazaars in the surrounding area enthusiastically, making their strength in numbers clearer with every passing day. Ultimately the desperation of her people forced Chand Kaur to open the gates. This she did only in exchange for a generous settlement and safe passage from the palace for herself and her grieving daughter-in-law.

  With the Koh-i-Noor strapped to his arm, Sher Singh was anointed maharaja of Punjab, on 18 January 1841. As he sat on the golden throne, the unquestioned ruler of Punjab, he perhaps realised that as long as Chand Kaur lived, she remained his greatest threat.

  On 11 June 1842, Chand Kaur was found dead in a pool of blood at her palace. Like her son, Nau Nihal, the dowager’s skull had been crushed. This time there was no way of mistaking her death for any freak accident. Chand Kaur’s own maids had beaten her to death with bricks as they brushed her hair. Apprehended by guards as they attempted to flee the scene, the women were dragged to Sher Singh’s palace to await judgement, all the while protesting their innocence.

  Sher Singh was away on a hunting t
rip at the time, far from any accusation of complicity, so it was left to his vizier, Dhian Singh, to punish the women. He ordered their noses, ears and hands to be cut off, before having their bleeding but yet breathing bodies thrown out of the city. Dr Honigberger noted wryly that perhaps he should have ripped their tongues out too, since they left Lahore screaming that they had only been obeying their maharaja’s orders.

  Though he might have thought he had shored up his position, Sher Singh’s days were also numbered. A year later, on 15 September 1843, the maharaja was greeted at his hunting lodge by two trusted cousins, Ajit Singh Sandhanwalia and his brother Lena Singh. Knowing Sher Singh’s great passion for weaponry, they had come to show him a new type of gun, ‘a double-barrelled fowling-piece’.1 The gun went off while it was pointing at Sher Singh’s chest. Though the maharaja’s cousins insisted that the shooting had been accidental, there was little explanation as to how and why it might have gone off a second time in his face,2 nor why his beloved ten-year-old son was also found dead, ‘cut into pieces with sabres’,3 at the Padhania gardens nearby. Dhian Singh, the scheming vizier who had survived three maharajas, was also murdered shortly afterwards.

  In the four years that followed Ranjit Singh’s death, Punjab had lost three maharajas, two crown princes, one dowager queen and numerous aristocrats. By December 1843, the last man standing was no man at all, but a tiny doe-eyed child by the name of Duleep Singh. Desperate for a symbol of unity, the entire durbar united behind Ranjit Singh’s five-year-old son.

  Born on 8 September 1838, Duleep Singh never knew his father. Barely a year old when Ranjit Singh died, Duleep found himself spirited away from Lahore before his father’s funeral. Recognising the approaching succession storm, Rani Jindan, his mother, had taken her baby to Jammu where they could remain out of sight, far away from murderous minds. In retrospect, the infant prince was lucky to have had the protection of one such as Jindan. What she lacked in breeding, she more than made up for in brute survival instinct.