Empires of the Indus

by Alice Albinia

  ‘the entire Sindhi administration’: A. Khan, p.140.

  ‘G. M. Syed’: On the same day that Syed was placed under house arrest, the government interned Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the popular Pashtun leader who had peacefully opposed the Pakistan movement and campaigned for an independent Pakhtunistan.

  ‘“authoritarian methods of government”’: Z. H. Zaidi, ed., p.450.

  ‘“exotic and exalted” Indian cities’: Khuhro, ‘Another Kind of Migration’, in Shamsie, ed., p.107.

  ‘In 1938, he agreed with his colleagues’: Khuhro, 1998a, p.315.

  ‘“the grand old days before Partition”’: Bolitho, p.218.

  ‘unscrupulous and opportunistic’: Ziring, p.71.

  ‘“in a frenzy to consolidate Pakistan”’: quoted in Wolpert, p.343.

  ‘he lay on the roadside next to a refugee camp’: Ziring, p.80.

  ‘Kashmir and Junagadh’: two princely states contiguous with Pakistan, the former Hindu-run with a Muslim majority population, the latter Muslim-ruled with a Hindu-majority population.

  ‘tuberculosis was considered…’: Dawn, 12 September 1948.

  ‘“defending and maintaining Pakistan”’: Dawn, 13 September 1948.

  2: Conquering the Classic River

  ‘“a foul and perplexing river”’: Wood, 9 February 1836, in East India Company, 1837, p.6.

  ‘the old Indus Delta’: The old delta was in what is now Karachi, and certain quarters of the city–Gizri, Korangi–still bear the names of the active tidal creeks they once were. See M. Ahmed, p.13.

  ‘over-zealous coastguards’: see Sanghur.

  ‘“commodious” “River Syndhu”’: Foster, 1926, pp.75–6.

  ‘the English had beaten the Portuguese’: Keay, 1993, p.108.

  ‘“they laugh at us for such as wee bring”’: Foster, 1926, pp.76–7.

  ‘“coullers most requireable”’: Foster, 1911, p.191.

  ‘“flower of the whole parcel”’: Foster, 1912, p.274.

  ‘Agra, Ahmedabad and Basra’: Duarte, p.34.

  ‘“clove, cinnamon, purple”’: ‘Scindy Diary’, p.8.

  ‘in 1775 they evicted the Company’: M. Ali, 1983, p.13.

  ‘Crow was expelled’: Duarte, pp.66–8.

  ‘“and for the most part unsatisfactory”’: J. Burnes, 1831, p.27.

  The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea: Anon., tr. Schoff, 1912, p.37.

  ‘Indus, incolis Sindhus appellatus’: quoted in d’Anville, 1759, p.8; ‘ad Indum amnem’: Wink, p.132.

  ‘“classic river”’: J. Burnes, 1831, p.11.

  ‘woefully imprecise’: d’Anville, 1753, p.15.

  ‘charted in 1842’: Vigne, 1842, p.123.

  ‘they thought the Indus rose in Kashmir’: Thornton, I, p.264. As late as 1951, David Lilienthal, who brokered the Indus Waters Treaty, wrote that the Indus rises in Kashmir (p.58).

  ‘“Wheat, Rice and Legumen”’: Hamilton, pp.121, xii–xiii, 125.

  ‘“The Indus forms a strong barrier”’: Forster, 1798, p.47.

  ‘“that Country, has been successfully invaded”’: East India Company, 1830, f.27v.

  ‘“tribe of the French”’: East India Company, 1839, p.315.

  ‘“Horses of the Gigantic Breed”’: A. Burnes, 1831b, Sheet 11.

  ‘“navigation into a most fertile country”’: A. Burnes, 1831b, p.2.

  ‘“the Indus which flows through Sinde”’: treaties signed by the rulers of Hyderabad and Khairpur, see East India Company, 1837, ‘Appendix 1: Colonel Pottinger’s Arrangements for the Navigation of the Indus’, p.11.

  ‘“The haughty Lords of SINDE”’: letter from A. Burnes to John McNeil, 6 June 1837, in A. Burnes, 1837.

  ‘“As we ascended the river”’: A. Burnes, 1834, I, p.ix; III, pp.136–7, 37–8.

  ‘He was feted in every salon’: The Times commented that ‘No book of travels has for some years past presented stronger claims to notice than the narrative published by Lieutenant Alexander Burnes’, 20 August 1834, p.2, col.f. See Kaye, 1867, II, p.26.

  ‘The French and English Geographical Societies’: see Laurie, p.6 n.1.

  ‘the Monthly Review’: 1834 (August, II:4), p.456.

  ‘the Spectator’: 5 July 1834, p.637.

  ‘was translated’: German (1835), Italian (1842), French (1855) and an abridged Spanish translation under a different title in 1860.

  ‘European pioneers in a “virgin” land’: A. Burnes, 1834, II, p.395.

  ‘Auckland gave his reasons’: ‘Simlah Manifesto’ of 1 October 1838, quoted in Kaye, 1874, I, pp.369–74.

  ‘“flowery imagination”’: Anon., 1845, p.12. See also Hall, pp.54–9.

  ‘the Afghans appeared ungrateful’: Anon., 1845, pp.15–16; Holdsworth, p.72; Jackson, p.3. Kaye called the entry of the Shah into Kabul a ‘funeral procession’: 1874, I, p.479.

  ‘“a nation almost unknown in the days of Alexander”’: Holdsworth, Preface: pp.v–viii.

  ‘Sir John Hobhouse’: Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 1840 (LI: col.1169ff, 1321ff).

  ‘“stirring like Lions”’: quoted in J. Burnes, 1842, f.135.

  ‘The Court of Directors’: Kaye, 1874, I, pp.380, 177n.

  ‘They chose the late lamented Burnes’: Kaye expressed his ‘abhorrence’ of the manner in which officialdom had ‘garbled the correspondence of public men’: ibid., p.203. James Burnes also protested at his brother’s posthumous mistreatment.

  ‘Charles Napier, the future conqueror of Sindh’: W. F. P. Napier, 1845, p.11.

  ‘Ellenborough even ordered that the sandalwood gates’: Kaye, 1874, III, pp.380–1.

  ‘the gates were not Gujarati at all’: Thapar, 2000, p.44.

  ‘Sir Charles Napier–a sixty-year-old General’: Lambrick, p.149.

  ‘The loot from the fort’: Hughes, p.43.

  ‘As for the army’: see Kaye, 1874, I, pp.380ff, for a summary of the main objections. British merchants also condemned the ‘wanton demolition of the Grand Bazaar in Cabool’ as hindering the progress of Ellenborough’s own commercial policy in the region (see ‘British Prospectus’, in Napier Papers, p.39v).

  ‘the reputation of the trans-Indus provinces’: British attitudes to the ‘barbarous tribes’ of the Indus valley changed from hostility and suspicion to one of gratitude and even admiration; see, for example, Greathed, p.x; also Bell, pp.iii, 2; and Aitken, p.142.

  ‘a “nation of shopkeepers”’: Masson, III, p.453; I, pp.v–xii; III, pp.430–3.

  ‘The first sixty miles of river’: East India Company, 1837, p.3. Tavernier had pointed to this problem long before: ‘The commerce of Tatta, which formerly was considerable, is decreasing rapidly, because the entrance to the river becomes worse from day to day, and the sands, which have accumulated, almost close the passage’: p.9.

  ‘Merchants had long since “abandoned the Indus”’: Heddle, p.442.

  ‘“a foul and perplexing river”’: Wood, 9 February 1836, in East India Company, 1837, p.6.

  ‘“the ever-changing channels of our Indian rivers”’: Wood, 1838a, Mf.1068, p.549.

  ‘“4 of the War Steamers on the Indus”’: C. Napier, 1846, p.26.

  ‘“the combined system of railways and steam-boats”’: Andrew, 1859, p.1.

  ‘By 1861, passengers’: Bombay Government.

  ‘not to say dangerous’: river accidents gave impetus to the construction of the railway line from Karachi to Kotri; see Aitken, p.356.

  ‘Our Paper’: 19 February 1867, p.57.

  ‘“inefficient, uncertain, unsafe, costly”’: Andrew, 1869, p.3. In 1886, the Scinde-Punjaub Railway eventually became subsumed within the new ‘imperial…North-Western Railway’: Aitken, p.345; also Kerr, pp.44, 76.

  ‘60 per cent of the surface water’: quoted in Michel, pp.74, 84–8.

  ‘The Delta lands’: A. Hasan, 2002, p.130.

  ‘a barren, unpeopled land’: A. Burnes, 1834, III, p.37.

  ‘The need to build more dams’:
Michel, pp.197ff.

  ‘a confidential British Foreign Office memo’: ‘Indus Waters Dispute’, Government of Britain: Foreign Office, 1 November 1951.

  ‘the Delta shrank’: A. Hasan, 1999, p.27.

  3: Ethiopia’s First Fruit

  ‘The state of my Sheedi brothers in Sindh’: Mussafir, 1952, Preface.

  ‘24 March 1843’: This is the date given on the plaque by the Young Sheedi Welfare Organization (Badin). Others say 23 March, some 26 March.

  ‘Hosh Muhammad Sheedi’: Burton (1848) described him as ‘the favourite attendant of Shere Mahomed’ (the Talpur ruler from Mirpur Khas) but it seems in fact that he was by birth in the service of the Talpur rulers of Hyderabad, and only joined Sher Muhammad when all the other Talpur rulers had capitulated to the British. See also F. Ahmed, p.25.

  ‘Slaves were not objects’: Segal, p.5ff.

  ‘Freeing a “believing slave”’: Qur’an 4.92.

  ‘soldiers, advisers or generals’: Toru and Philips, p.ix.

  ‘From the ninth century onwards’: Wink, p.13.

  ‘“[A Towne Misse]”’: quoted in Aravamudan, p.34.

  ‘the revolt by black slaves’: Edward Alpers in Pankhurst and Jayasuriya, eds, p.22.

  ‘forever the servants of non-blacks’: Helene Basu in Pankhurst and Jayasuriya, eds, p.230.

  ‘al-Masudi and Avicenna’: Segal, pp.47–9.

  ‘Ferishta, the Persian historian’: Friese.

  ‘A Kashmiri Hindu recoiled in horror’: see Pollock, p.277.

  ‘“The word Mogull in their language”’: Coverte, p.39.

  ‘Asia, which already had a large agrarian population’: Segal, p.4.

  ‘Ibn Battuta, a Moroccan trader and writer’: quoted in Gibb, tr., p.632.

  ‘the Portuguese sailor João de Castro’: quoted by Richard Pankhurst in Pankhurst and Jayasuriya, eds, p.200.

  ‘African admirals worked for the Mughal empire’: Segal, p.72.

  ‘the Marathas in western India’: Pankhurst, in Pankhurst and Jayasuriya, eds, p.213.

  ‘the period of “Shidi rule” in Bombay’: Hotchand, pp.94–101.

  ‘“Frizled Woolly-pated Blacks”’: Fryer, pp.147, 168.

  ‘“faithful and even affectionate service”’: Grose, p.149.

  ‘“the part played by the Habshis”’: Ross, II, pp.xxii, xxxviii.

  ‘“the greater number of Sidis, or negroes”’: Beachey, p.50.

  ‘“Zanzibarees, Bombasees, and Hubshees”’: Burton, 1848, p.646.

  ‘“monstrous muscular arms”’: Burton, 1851b, pp.52–3. Burton changed some words of this description in the 1877 updated edition: ‘monstrous’ became ‘mighty’, ‘uncomely’ became ‘buffalo-like’.

  ‘“sea-Thugs”’: Burton, 1877, pp.13–14.

  ‘shaydâ, “fool” or “senseless”’: During, p.54. An alternative etymology suggests that ‘Sheedi’ derives from Arabic Syed, the literal meaning of which is Master/Lord/Sir (although it has come to be associated with the Prophet’s descendants). In Morocco, for example, this Arabic word is pronounced ‘Sidi’.

  ‘twenty-five slaves on board’: Baillie, p.36.

  ‘fighting men from Zanzibar’: Hotchand, p.175.

  ‘dark skin and tightly curled hair’: Pashington Obeng in Catlin-Jairazbhoy and Alpers, eds, pp.143–7.

  ‘The Sanskrit law books of classical Hinduism’: Jha, p.22.

  ‘the authors of the Rig Veda’: quoted in Muir, II, pp.391ff.

  ‘12 per cent of paternal Y-chromosomes’: Qamar et al., pp.1107–24.

  ‘A North American musicologist’: Edward Alpers in Pankhurst and Jayasuriya, eds, p.35.

  ‘Swahili-speaking tribes’: Freeman-Grenville.

  ‘the ngoma drum from Zimbabwe’: Catlin-Jairazbhoy, in Catlin-Jairazbhoy and Alpers, eds, pp.189–90.

  ‘Mai Mishra’: Helene Basu in ibid., p.67.

  ‘Bilal’s conversion to Islam’: Later Bilal’s name was changed again, during an illness, to Gulab.

  ‘emancipation being “to them a real evil”’: Burton, 1851a, p.253.

  4: River Saints

  ‘“debt bondage”’: see Anti-Slavery International, 2002.

  ‘Local pirs, who had lost murids’: There was a local precedent: two centuries earlier, Mian Adam Shah Kalhora found the force of the Mughal army bearing fatally down upon him after his experiment in communal farming angered the local aristocracy.

  ‘The nobles wrote letters to each other’: Schimmel, 1969, p.160.

  ‘“the depravity in this sink of iniquity”’: Manrique, II, p.240.

  ‘Sarmad’s nudity did not’: Singer and Gray.

  ‘“how can I tell a lie?”’: Seth. A similar story is told of the eccentric/ecstatic Baghdadi Sufi Shebli; see Arberry, tr., 1979, p.286.

  ‘“Mansoor of India”’: ibid., p.5.

  ‘“He sacrificed everything”’: Syed.

  ‘The result was a feudal system’: See Sarah Ansari on ‘the British practice of distributing patronage based on the preservation of landed interests’: ‘the relationship between the British and Sind’s religious élite came to form part of the “balancing act” which the authorities performed in order to maintain overall control in the Sindhi countryside’ (p.36).

  ‘“lower-income housewives suffer from anxiety”’: Mirza and Jenkins, p.796; and N. Husain et al., p.5.

  ‘Water is a blessing’: Schimmel, 1986, p.14.

  ‘“Pot in hand, trust in God”’: This translation is a mixture of that of Elsa Kazi (repr. 1996) and Amena Khamisani (2003).

  ‘Latif invented an instrument’: Colonel Todd was of the opinion that the Indian scale was invented on the banks of the Indus; see Tirathdas Hotechand in Akhund, ed., p.160.

  ‘Hussamuddin Rashdi’: quoted by Schimmel, 1976, p.153.

  ‘These verses are also interpreted’: Advani, p.16.

  ‘The early Jesuit missionaries’: Stuart, pp.259–63.

  ‘the Ismaili Satpanthi community’: Khakee.

  ‘Lal Shahbaz Qalandar’s whim’: A. Burnes, 1834, III, p.57.

  ‘by Muslims as well as Hindus at two places in Sindh’: Arif Hasan writes that in Karachi there was once ‘a mosque and a temple dedicated to Daryalal, the water deity’ (A. Hasan, 1986, p.76).

  ‘the hitherto nameless friend of Moses’: Later he assumed an important role in Sufi circles as the mystic initiator of new masterless disciples; see Schimmel, 1976, p.22.

  ‘“river godlings or saints”’: Temple.

  ‘“throne of serpents”’: A. Hasan, 2002.

  ‘“the entire Hindu social organization”’: Ajwani, p.89.

  ‘Muslims had stifled its revival’: Ajwani, p.3. Claude Markovits notes that this trend was exacerbated by Partition: the beliefs of Sindhi Hindus who left Pakistan to live in India ‘underwent a redefinition’, he writes, in order to ‘fit within “mainstream” Hinduism’. The Sufism was dropped; the cult of Jhule Lal was promoted (Markovits, p.285).

  ‘“the special duty of Zinda Pir”’: Mariwalla, p.136.

  5: The Guru’s Army

  ‘Panj Piriya’: Y. Husain, pp.31–2.

  ‘“a sort of Vatican”’: quoted in Mosley, pp.211–12.

  ‘“Bestow on the Khalsa”’: Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, 2004, p.10.

  ‘during the 1881 and 1891 censuses’: Markovits, p.255.

  ‘The people whispered’: K. Singh, 2005, p.31.

  ‘a pool of water in the south Indian desert’: McLeod, pp.49, 47, 57.

  ‘the “future confluence of world-cultures”’: Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, 2002, p.2.

  ‘“Religion lieth not in visiting tombs”’: tr. K. Singh, 1978, p.167.

  ‘He did not believe in reincarnation, avatars or caste’: ibid., p.4.

  ‘Lying directly on the route from Kabul to Delhi’: The destruction wreaked by the Mongol Taimur (Tamerlane) in 1398 was only the most dramatic in a long succession of such attacks. When the Sultan of Delhi entered Laho
re in 1421, he found the city deserted: ‘only the owl of ill omen had its abode’ (quoted in Ahuja, p.56).

  ‘“Bringing the marriage party of sin’”: http://www.srigranth.org/servlet/gurbani.gurbani?Action=KeertanPage&K=722&L=17.

  ‘Padmanabhan’: pp.168–71.

  ‘Sikhs as “murderous butchers”’: See Rubina Saigol: ‘The Sikhs appear primarily as knife-wielding and murderous butchers’ (2004).

  ‘“Hindu-Muslim marriage in Pakistan”’: interview with Rukhsana Noor, 17 February 2004.

  ‘“from a pietistic Hindu sect into a martial faith”’: Cohen, 2004, p.16.

  ‘Jahangir, the new emperor’: K. Singh, 2005, p.57.

  ‘celebrated Hindu festivals, married Muslim wives’: That was the broad picture; in the detail, Ranjit Singh ruled much as the Mughals had done–by placing the heaviest burden on the peasantry. See Purewal, p.38.

  ‘“their glittering and bespangled faces”’: A. Burnes, 1831a.

  ‘the gold-embossed letter’: Ranjit Singh’s letter to Alexander Burnes was kindly translated for me by Dr Yunus Jaffery.

  ‘In his army there was a Sikh cavalry’: K. Singh, 2005, p.200.

  ‘“Muslims and Hindus are completely different”’: quoted by Nayyar and Salim, p.80.

  ‘“I will not let you drink the water of my Punjab”’: quoted by K. Singh, 2005, p.75.

  ‘a French-trained standing army’: Lafont, p.207.

  ‘army recruitment manual’: quoted by Cohen, 1990, p.212, footnote 18.

  ‘During both World Wars’: Cohen, 1999, pp.41–2.

  ‘the British tricked Sikhs’: Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, 2002, p.20.

  ‘In a direct continuation from the colonial era’: Imran Ali, pp.237–42.

  ‘Dams, they say, are highly wasteful’: Kaiser Bengali and Nafisa Shah in Bengali, ed., p.xv.

  ‘Pakistan’s foreign debt’: Khalid Ahmed in Bengali, ed., p.86.

  ‘entirely inoperable by 2030’: A. R. Memon in Bengali, ed., p.180.

  ‘in particular Kalabagh’: Kalabagh was even criticized recently by a governmental report commissioned by the President (the Abbasi Report, 2005). Unfortunately, the report advocated two alternative dams in Kalabagh’s place. One is Basha, north of Islamabad on the Karakoram Highway, which would submerge a hugely important prehistoric rock art site. The other is the Skardu dam in the far north of the country, which some fear would flood an entire city.