Koh-i-Noor

by William Dalrymple

  Accused of orchestrating the violence, Mulraj became just the villain the East India Company, and more specifically Lord Dalhousie, had been looking for. The British declared war, and their troops swiftly converged on Punjab. Mulraj was painted as a bloodthirsty despot, intent on the overthrow of Duleep Singh and his British allies. By smearing Mulraj as an enemy of the maharaja it was hoped that the rest of Punjab would stay out of the conflict. But the British ploy had worn thin: soldiers from the old imperial army joined the Multan rebels, and conflict spread throughout the kingdom.

  Lieutenant Herbert Edwardes, the British political agent in Bannu, was stationed near Multan, and sent his Pakhtun irregulars, and some Sikh regiments to drive back the rebels. Together, they engaged Mulraj’s army at the Battle of Kineyri on 18 June 1848. The British Resident Currie then ordered a small force from the Bengal army to lay siege to the city of Multan, wanting to crush the centre of defiance once and for all. In November, the East India Company’s armies also joined the war effort.

  The battle of Chillianwala would prove the most bloody of the conflict. The fighting, which took place on 13 January 1849, would ultimately lead to the death of almost 2,000 East India Company troops.It occurred 250 miles north-east of Multan, in the same region where King Porus, an Indian ruler of Punjab, was once defeated by Alexander the Great in 326 BCE. Like Porus’s troops before them, the Sikhs fought as if defeat were not an option, and their ferocity took many on the British side aback, as one eyewitness later reported: ‘[They] fought like devils, fierce and untamed … Such a mass of men I never set eyes on and as plucky as lions: they ran right on the bayonets and struck their assailants when they were transfixed …’9

  Though Chillianwala ended with neither side gaining territory and both claiming victory, other battles were more decisive. More British troops, and soldiers from the East India Company, converged on Punjab by the day. Multan fell and eventually every rebelling force was either wiped out or forced to surrender. The final decisive battle took place in Gujrat and on 21 February 1849, British East India Company forces, armed with superior firepower, defeated what remained of the Sikh Empire’s army.

  The second Anglo-Sikh War had lasted almost a year, and at the end of it, Punjab was forced to watch what little was left of its imperial infrastructure destroyed.

  This time, Dalhousie wanted the British conquest to be unmistakable, and under his direction the East India Company continued to pour men, artillery and logistics into the region. After the loss of thousands of lives, what was left of a rag-tag resistance surrendered on 12 March 1849. Rebel leaders, including Mulraj, were rounded up and sent to the Lahore dungeons to await trial and possible execution.

  With all opposition now dead or in chains, on 29 March 1849 a new legal document was forced upon Duleep Singh, laying out stricter terms for surrender than any in Lahore had expected. The child, terrified by the recent fighting in his kingdom, separated from his mother and surrounded by foreigners and a smattering of Punjab nobles either too weak or too corrupt to stand up for him, was told he must sign over his kingdom, his fortune and his future. His British allies were all that stood between him and chaos, he was informed, and they now required nothing less than his complete acquiescence.

  The Koh-i-Noor was high on the list of demands, and, with little choice, the ten-year-old obediently scratched his name on the document, agreeing to its uncompromising terms:

  I.His Highness the Maharajah Duleep Singh shall resign for himself, his heirs, and successors all right, title, and claim to the sovereignty of the Punjab, or to any sovereign power whatever.

  II.All the property of the State of whatever description and wheresoever found, shall be confiscated to the Honourable East India Company, in part payment of the debt due by the State of Lahore to the British Government and of the expenses of the war.

  III.The gem called the Koh-i-Noor, which was taken from Shah Sooja-ool-mulk by Maharajah Runjeet Singh, shall be surrendered by the Maharajah of Lahore to the Queen of England.

  IV.His Highness Duleep Singh shall receive from the Honourable East India Company, for the support of himself, his relatives and the servants of the State, a pension of not less than four and not exceeding five lakhs of the Company’s rupees per annum.

  V.His Highness shall be treated with respect and honour. He shall retain the title of Maharajah Duleep Singh Bahadoor, and he shall continue to receive during his life such portion of the above-named pension as may be allotted to himself personally, provided he shall remain obedient to the British Government, and shall reside at such place as the Governor-General of India may select.

  With the signing of this, the final Treaty of Lahore, Punjab was now unquestionably a British territory; the Koh-i-Noor was British property; Maharaja Duleep Singh was a British problem. Such an outcome would have been unthinkable during the reign of Ranjit Singh, and had been brought about largely by the iron will of the new governor general of India.

  When the thirty-five-year-old Earl of Dalhousie was named Hardinge’s successor in 1847, he became the youngest ever governor general of India. His arrival in Lahore came a year after the signing of a document that had promised ‘… perpetual peace and friendship between the British Government on the one part, and Mahrajah Dhuleep Sing [sic] his heirs and successors on the other …’ The earlier treaty had also promised a British exit from Punjab when Duleep came of age. Such a return of territory did not fit with Dalhousie’s view of imperial expansionism. Multan became not only his first real test in office, but also his first opportunity to challenge the agreements signed by his predecessors.

  To some, including the former secretary of state for India, the Duke of Argyll, Dalhousie had shown the very best of British spirit: ‘The history of the world presents no more splendid example of deserved success than the administration of the Punjaub under Lord Dalhousie. It displayed the highest virtues of a conquering and ruling race.’10 To others, Dalhousie had behaved in a less than exemplary way, and had sowed the seeds of rebellion by his own hand. The poet and historian Edwin Arnold went as far as to suggest that the second Anglo-Sikh War had been caused by Dalhousie himself: ‘The policy which afforded Moolraj time to turn a personal quarrel into a national revolt, and swelled the six thousand rabble of Mooltan into the thirty thousand warriors of Chillianwala, cannot be praised.’ In words that stung Dalhousie’s supporters, and drove the likes of Argyll to defend his conduct publicly, Arnold wrote: ‘India was given to us, and will be kept, by men who, in the high mission of her mastery and redemption, are cautious in counsel without dulness, and swift in action without rashness.’11

  When news reached Dalhousie that Duleep had signed the terms of surrender in 1849, he reacted with jubilation. Writing to a friend he declared: ‘I had now “caught my hare”.’ The seizure of the Koh-i-Noor was as important as the annexation of the region. In the letter to his friend, Dalhousie added exultantly: ‘the Council of the Regency and the Maharajah signed their submission to the British power, surrendered the Koh-i-Noor to the Queen of England; the British colours were hoisted on the Citadel of Lahore, and the Punjab, every inch of it, was proclaimed to be a portion of the British Empire in India.’12

  With a characteristic flourish, he predicted the British government’s response to his actions:

  If they sanction and approve (as unless they are maniacs they must do), their approval will be full and conspicuous. It is not every day that an officer of their Government adds four millions of subjects to the British Empire, and places the historical jewel of the Mogul Emperors in the Crown of his own Sovereign. This I have done. Do not think I unduly exult.13

  The diamond’s fate was settled and Duleep’s fate was now entirely in Dalhousie’s hands. The young maharaja had no way of knowing it, but even as he signed the treaty the governor general had already decided to send him away from Punjab, far from everything he had ever known. The Fategarh Hill Fort (in the Farrukhabad district of present-day Uttar Pradesh), almost 600 miles away, was cho
sen for Duleep’s banishment, and de facto parents had even been selected to raise him. A Scottish doctor by the name of John Spencer Login and his wife Lena would look after the young maharaja until he became a man.

  Lord Dalhousie, as he himself predicted, was eventually rewarded for his efforts and created a marquess. Because of him, the Koh-i-Noor was destined for England. India would never see its jewel again. Punjab would lose its king.

  John Login was deemed by the British to be one of the most steadfast men in all India. Such was the faith placed in him that after the annexation he had been given the keys to the toshakhana. In the vaults, Login catalogued the Sikh Empire’s treasures, including the Koh-i-Noor. Surrounded by piles of gold, he recorded descriptions, took measurements and estimated values for the East India Company. The assistant commissioner of Lahore, Robert R. Adams, watched him work and was amazed at Login’s ability to resist the lures of his surroundings. As he wrote to Login’s wife:

  I wish you could walk through that same Toshakhana and see its wonders! The vast quantities of gold and silver, the jewels not to be valued, so many and so rich! The Koh-i-noor, far beyond what I had imagined … And all this made over to him, without any list, or public document of any sort, all put in his hands to set in order, value, sell, etc; that speaks volumes, does it not, for the character he bears with those whose good opinions are worth having? Few men, I fancy, would have been so implicitly trusted.14

  Like Misr Beli Ram before him, Login took his duties in the vaults extremely seriously, personally foiling a plot by some of his own countrymen to steal from the treasury. One evening when he had been working late, British soldiers successfully tunnelled into one of the darkened rooms containing treasure. They knocked a guard senseless and made off with whatever they could carry. The Koh-i-Noor, however, was safely out of their reach, in a special vault with a dedicated guard. Login not only raised the alarm, but personally led the hunting party which eventually tracked down the thieves. He also co-ordinated meticulous searches of the British barracks and nearby flowerbeds till he found every coin that had been taken.

  Few were surprised by Login’s dedication to his job. His association with India stretched back more than a decade and he had always conducted himself in an exemplary manner. He had served as a medic during the Afghan War of 1839–42, and then as a general administrator for the growing British Empire. A man of faith, his unswerving Christian belief governed his every action.

  Though Login recognised the honour of being trusted to guard the Koh-i-Noor, he did not relish the task. The men who had looked after it before him, Misr Beli Ram and his assistant, Misr Makraj, had whispered frequently of its dark power. Makraj, who had stayed on to assist Login in the toshakhana, was ‘eloquent in his expressions of relief at being set free from the sole responsibility’ for the diamond. As he handed it over to Login he reminded him: ‘the Koh-i-noor had been fatal to so many of his family that he had hardly hoped ever to survive the charge of it!’15

  Privately, Login hoped the diamond might be taken from his care too, as soon as possible, and preferably sold to the highest bidder. By his calculations, this would leave ample funds to replenish British war coffers and a considerable balance would also be left over which might be used ‘in the improvement of the country from whence the Koh-i-noor came’.16

  When Dalhousie made it clear that every last coin and trinket was to be sent back to England, and not a penny of gain spent on the natives, Login felt decidedly uneasy. Not only did it jar with his sense of Christian charity and fairness, he also harboured doubts about whether Dalhousie had had any legal or moral justification to start the second Anglo-Sikh War in the first place.

  The governor general had blamed the ‘villain Mulraj’ for precipitating the conflict. The chieftain of Multan was painted as a cunning and ruthless warrior, hell-bent on the destruction of the British. The threat from such a malign figure had made the British cause seem righteous. However, Login had been given the keys to the citadel dungeons as well as to its vaults, and it was to one of these cells that Mulraj, the most wanted man in all India, was brought in chains. Login was entrusted with processing the prisoner and keeping him incarcerated till the date of his trial had been set.

  Writing to his wife, Login confessed that Mulraj was nothing like the bloodthirsty rebel she may have read about in the papers, a man who had killed a friend of theirs, ‘but rather a weak, chicken-hearted fellow, afraid to do what was right, and entirely in the hands of some resolute villains around him. I don’t think he really intended any harm to dear Pat Vans Agnew …’17

  Login was left with no time to dwell on his misgivings, since in addition to his responsibility for the toshakhana he now also had to take charge of Duleep. Arrangements had to be made, and a little boy needed to be won over. He resolved to show his new ward nothing but kindness. He believed that a blameless boy was being punished for the actions of others. Login was not alone in feeling this way.

  Sir Henry Lawrence, the resident of Lahore who had ignored the pleading letters from Rani Jindan, was also touched by Duleep Singh’s plight. He had been against the military campaign from the start, and would have preferred to have left Duleep on the throne, forging a mutually beneficial alliance with the natives. As Lena Login later recalled: ‘the Governor-General’s [Dalhousie’s] decision [to annex the kingdom] was a sore grief to the generous-hearted Resident, and a reversal of many cherished hopes and projects’.18

  The British press had no such misgivings and crowed over the annexation, painting the boy king Duleep as the author of his own misfortune: ‘… this famous diamond (the largest and most precious in the world) forfeited by the treachery of the sovereign at Lahore, [is] now under the security of British bayonets at the fortress of Goindghur …’ the Delhi Gazette said. ‘It is hoped [it] will ere long, as one of the splendid trophies of our military valour, be brought to England in attention of the glory of our arms in India.’19

  Duleep was as much ‘under the security of British bayonets’ as his Koh-i-Noor, and Dalhousie had little sympathy for him. The governor general described the maharaja as ‘A child notoriously surreptitious, a brat begotten of a bhishti [water-carrier], and no more the son of old Runjeet than Queen Victoria is …’20 Despite his efforts to rubbish the boy and cast doubt on his legitimacy, Dalhousie still met with questions over his conduct towards a minor. He offered a shrug by way of explanation: ‘He has a large territory but he is a boy … I am sorry for him, poor little fellow, although it is a superfluous compassion …’21 Even the loss of the Koh-i-Noor, Dalhousie argued, would have little effect on the boy, who would in time grow to be grateful for what the British had done for him: ‘He [Duleep] does not care two pence about it [the Koh-i-Noor] himself – he will have a good and regular stipend, (‘without income tax’) all his life, and will die in his bed like a gentleman; which under other circumstances, he certainly would not have done.’22

  The Mining Journal, a dry technical publication, gave a more accurate representation of Duleep’s plight than the governor general: ‘The recent war in Mooltan, and disturbances in the Punjaub, have induced the British resident at Lahore to secure, as a hostage, the person of the boy King Maharajah Dhuleep Singh, and at the same time to seize the Koh-i-Noor.’23

  Both Duleep and his diamond were now equally and entirely at the mercy of the British.

  8

  Passage to England

  Duleep’s new life began on 6 April 1849, the day he was formally introduced to his new guardian in Lahore. Login was more nervous than the child at their first meeting, and greatly relieved when it went better than he had dared to hope: ‘The little fellow seemed very well pleased with me, and we got on swimmingly … He seems a very fine-tempered boy, intelligent, and handsome.’1

  In letters to his wife Login described the ten-year-old Duleep as ‘very lovable’2 and eager to please. With large dark eyes fringed by long curling lashes, he had inherited his mother’s fine features. Duleep loved to paint and r
ead books; but it was his passion for Persian poetry and hunting with hawks that made him unmistakably regal. Unlike many other children, from time to time Duleep would retreat into himself, preferring to be alone and quiet. Login attributed such episodes to the maharaja’s contemplative nature rather than to any sadness. The pair assiduously avoided the topic of his mother or the Koh-i-Noor.

  For his ward’s eleventh birthday, the first since Duleep had lost his kingdom, Login decided to throw a large and colourful party: ‘I should like to see as many children as possible, on the little fellow’s account.’3 In order to make the day as perfect as he could, Login asked the British government if he might choose ‘a lakh of rupees’ worth’ of Duleep’s own jewels ‘to select and present to him’.4

  Had Duleep still reigned over his kingdom, his countrymen would have presented him with fabulous emeralds, rubies, diamonds and spinels to mark the day. Login wanted to approximate that experience, but could do so only by returning some of the gems which had been seized from the child, and which he himself had catalogued in the toshakhana. If Dalhousie gave consent, Duleep would be presented with precious baubles on his birthday, he would have his chance to look regal, and nobody needed to acknowledge that these trinkets had belonged to him only weeks before.

  Though Dalhousie was adamant that Duleep’s jewels were now the spoils of war, there were so many of them that the governor general could afford to be generous. John Login himself had catalogued the ‘medley of articles’, describing them as so numerous that they had often been treated with carelessness. He once told his wife: ‘One of the largest emeralds ever seen was accidentally discovered set in the pommel of a saddle! The saddle had been already condemned to be broken up or disposed of, when the piece of green glass (as it was supposed) was observed, set in the position in which the Sikh noblemen often carry a mirror when riding in full dress, to make sure that the turban and paraphernalia are all en règle.’5