by Kiran Nirvan
Hira Singh was born in 1869 to Bara Singh in a village called Dulaowala in present day Lahore, Pakistan. He was married to Bibi Inder Kaur and had fathered a three-month-old daughter at the time of the battle. He was only 28 years old when he gave his life at Saragarhi.
Sepoy Uttam Singh
No. 492 Sepoy Uttam Singh
Uttam Singh was born in 1868 to Lehna Singh in Moga near Ferozepur, Punjab. He married at the age of 25 and at the time of Battle of Saragarhi, this fearless sepoy was only 29 years old.
Sepoy Daya Singh
No. 687 Sepoy Daya Singh
Daya Singh was born in the year 1870 to Sangat Singh in the village of Khadaksinghwala, near Patiala, Punjab. At the time of the battle, this brave soldier was only 27 years old.
Sepoy Jiwan Singh
No. 760 Sepoy Jiwan Singh
Jiwan Singh was born in the year 1869 to Hira Singh in the village of Nakodar near Jalandhar, Punjab. He sacrificed his life when he was just 28 years old.
Sepoy Bhola Singh
No. 791 Sepoy Bhola Singh
Bhola Singh was born in the year 1865 and was 32 years of age when he fought and died during the Battle of Saragarhi.
Signalman Gurmukh Singh
No. 1733 Signalman Gurmukh Singh
Gurmukh Singh was born in the year 1874 to Garja Singh in the village Kamana, Garhshanker in Punjab. Singh, a young signaller at the Saragarhi fort, played a very important role during the battle. It is because of his communication with the the unit in Fort Lockhart that information about the events as they happened was successfully relayed. If this soldier would not have done his duty well under the pressure of battle, most of the details we now know would have remained a mystery. In the later part of the book, when the battle is described in detail, his actions will be expanded upon further.
Sepoy Narain Singh
No. 834 Sepoy Narain Singh
Narain Singh was born in 1867 to Gujjar Singh. During the Battle of Saragarhi, he was 30 years old.
Sepoy Jiwan Singh
No. 871 Sepoy Jiwan Singh
Jiwan Singh was born in 1869 to Noopa Singh. During the battle of Saragarhi, he was merely 28 years old.
Sepoy Nand Singh
No. 1221 Sepoy Nand Singh
Nand Singh was born in 1873 in the village of Attowal near Hoshiarpur, Punjab. He gave his life at a mere 24 years of age.
Sepoy Bhagwan Singh
No. 1257 Sepoy Bhagwan Singh
Bhagwan Singh was born in 1872 to Hira Singh in a village near Amargarh, Patiala. During the battle of Saragarhi, he was only 25 years old.
Sepoy Bhagwan Singh
No. 1265 Sepoy Bhagwan Singh
Bhagwan Singh was born in 1873 to Bir Singh. At the time of the battle, he was just 24 years old.
Sepoy Sundar Singh
No. 1321 Sepoy Sundar Singh
Sundar Singh was born in 1870 to Sudh Singh. At Saragarhi, he was 27 years old.
Sepoy Buta Singh
No. 1556 Sepoy Buta Singh
Buta Singh was born in 1868 to Charhat Singh and gave his life at just 29 years of age.
Sepoy Jiwan Singh
No. 1651 Sepoy Jiwan Singh
Jiwan Singh was born in 1873 to Kirpa Singh. During the battle, he was only 24 years of age.
Sepoy Gurmukh Singh
No. 814 Sepoy Gurmukh Singh
Gurmukh Singh was born in 1870 to Rann Singh. He was 27 when he gave his life on the battlefield.
NCE Camper Khuda Dadh
NCE Camper Khuda Dadh
Though Saragarhi was defended by 21 combatants, there was one more man present there that fateful day in 1897 – the non-combatant NCE Camper Khuda Dadh, who laid down his life along with the Sikh soldiers in an effort to save the post of Saragarhi. During the attack on Saragarhi, he is said to have faithfully carried out his duty by helping the fighting troops in opening ammunition boxes and loading ammunition for the combatants, providing them with water and looking after the wounded, and who, having learnt how to fire a rifle in the hour of the need, fought a few tribesmen before laying down his life. Khuda Dadh was born in the year 1857 in Nowshehra (in present day Pakistan) and was only forty years old during the battle of Saragarhi.
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It has been more than 100 years since the Battle of Saragarhi, but the sacrifice of these brave soldiers must not be forgotten. All of them gave their lives on the battlefield but not before they had already left a significant mark on the canvas of time, painting a picture of selfless service that would continue to be the guiding light to future generations of young men and women in uniform.
1Sohal, Jay Singh, The Saragarhi Foundation.
8
Tensions in Tirah
Outside, 10,000 Afridi and Orakzai Afghans marched, hungry for their old enemy’s blood. Inside, 21 soldiers and a non-combatant Muslim, all briefed, motivated and led by Havildar Ishar Singh, stood ready to face them. The walls of Saragarhi were the only thing standing in between them both. A dead silence fell over the valley – silence born of anxiety and uncertainty. While numerically superior, the Afghans knew what the Sikhs were capable of and knew that number alone would not win them this battle. The 21 soldiers, meanwhile, stood fearless under the kesari (saffron) flag that fluttered over Saragarhi.
‘I see a white flag,’ said Sepoy Gurmukh Singh, turning to Havildar Ishar Singh. ‘They want to talk’.
With a grin behind his thick beard, Ishar Singh replied, ‘Then we shall let them talk.’
Ishar Singh climbed the parapet and saw the leader of the tribes advancing with a column of a few tribesmen and a flagbearer, who then halted at a safe distance. ‘Don’t you see, foolish Singh? We are in the thousands,’ shouted a proud leader of the tribesmen. ‘I admire your decision to stay and fight but you won’t stand our onslaught for even a few minutes. So, I hereby offer you safe passage if you surrender.’
Ishar Singh glanced at his men and was pleased to see that they remained unaffected by the tribe leader’s announcement and stood as firm as before. He then looked the leader in the eye and said, ‘You Jehadis had once promised our Guru Gobind Singh safe passage and then betrayed him, and we are only a few ordinary men. Go and prepare your men for battle and pray that they do not falter when we roar. Today, you face the Guru’s sons.’
For another moment silence prevailed, only to be broken by Ishar Singh who turned to his men and, quoting Bhagat Kabir, said, ‘Gagan damama baajeyo, pariyo nisaane ghao, khet jo mandeyo soorma ab joojhan ko daau, soora so pehchaaniye jo ladey deen ke het, purja purja katt marey, kabahu na chhaadeh khet (The sky echoes the sounds of the kettle-drum, the heart is pierced with passion for righteousness, the hero is engaged in battle, now is the time to fight unto the last. He alone is the hero who fights and defends the needy and helpless, who even though hacked from limb to limb; he will not flee the field).’
A charged up Gurmukh Singh then roared: ‘Bole so nihaal!’ to which they all replied in unison: ‘Sat sri akal!’ Their war cry echoed in the Samana valley for one last time.
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The battle of Saragarhi was one of the many battles fought as part of the Tirah Campaign in which the 36th Sikhs played the important role of defending the forts at Samana hills. It is true that battle stress is a fine test of a soldier’s character whose reputation, proportional to his actions in battle, is either made or lost. It is when a man is consciously aware of the fate that awaits him that he will unknowingly perform the most honest actions driven by his core characteristics. In the campaign of Tirah and in defence of the Samana forts, the reputation of 36th Sikhs and its 21 soldiers at Saragarhi soared to levels not expected by any at the time.
In India, 1897 was a turbulent year, with challenges to the British India government emerging from both the hinterland and the frontiers. Where many regions fought famine and plague, an uprising in the North West Frontier became the bane of the administration’s existence. Tensions between the British and the Afghan tribes had escalated in the T
irah valley (that now lies between Pakistan and Afghanistan) to the extent that the British knew it could not be solved by dialogue between the warring groups. These tensions would eventually lead to many iconic battles fought by the natives of India along the frontiers, of which the Battle of Saragarhi was a part. Therefore, it is important to understand how these tensions began and how they shaped the history of the region.
Unrest in the Tirah Valley
The Campaign of Tirah was a response to the refusal of the Afridis and Orakzais to toe the lines drawn by the British with an aim to check damage to life and property being inflicted by them on the British convoys on India’s frontier posts. In the North West Frontier, the Tirah valley was made up of the highlands that lie between the Khyber and the Kurram, south of Safed-Koh mountains, which can be approached via the Kohat Pass through Hangu. The Tirah was divided between the Afridis, who resided in the north, and Orakzais, who resided in the south, with minor watersheds flowing in from the Kurram valley providing it natural defence against any expedition from the east. Since 1849 when the British annexed the state of Punjab, the area under the frontier region also came under British radar, with them moving up to Samana, a hill range in Tirah, but not yet occupying the mainland of Tirah. The Samana range runs westwards from Hangu, 50 kilometres west of Kohat and was surrounded by the Khanki valley in the north and the Miranzai valley in the south. Towards the north of Samana lies the Khanki valley, the general terrain of which was already discussed in brief in preceding chapters. The vast mountain slopes – barren, brown and sterile – shape themselves gradually into terraced flats the sides of which are furrowed with gullies of many ravines and streams. In the Khanki valley of 1897, as recorded in writing by those who visited it, the villages were not merely a group of clustered houses but the houses were quite scattered, occupying vast lands bound by apricot and walnut trees, which turned scarlet and yellow at the onset of autumn, painting the valley in colourful strokes. After the trees shed their yellow leaves in late autumn, a brown sterility, a sort of copper hue again swept through the landscape. The open flat land, called the Tirah maidan, was blessed with cultivable soil owing to the many waterbodies that had outlets in the valley. The entire area, not more than 50 square kilometres, was effectively utilized for the cultivation of cereal grains and a special variety of rice. The Orakzais and Afridis, the two major Pashtun tribes that resided in Tirah, about whom much has already been said, were born and bred on this very landscape.
The rising tensions in the North West Frontier region in 1897 was the culmination of constant skirmishes between the British and the local tribes of the region. The first ever expedition against Adam Khel Afridis was led by then Field Marshal Sir Colin Campbell (who became the Commander-in-Chief of India [1857- 1860] during the sepoy mutiny and is known for defeating Tatya Tope in the Second Battle of Cawnpore) in 1850 when the Afridis started to interfere with British columns as they traded through the frontier. It was the first time when these tribesmen began to be viewed as potential enemies by the British. These tribesmen disliked the idea of being controlled by anyone but their self-appointed leaders and were difficult to restrain within social limits and discipline. In fact, when the British made attempts to do so by inducting the Pathans in their frontier forces, the Pathan troops often offered little or no resistance to tribesmen rising against the British and prioritized saving their own lives when given a chance by the tribesmen.1 Things, however, finally came to a head with the signing of the Durand Line agreement in 1893 between Sir Henry Mortimer Durand and Amir Abdur Rahman Khan.
The Durand Line Agreement
Afghanistan was a country strategically located in Central Asia on which both the British and the Russians had eyes and both wanted its territory to be under their influence as a part of ‘The Great Game’. Therefore, Afghanistan feared an invasion from both of them. However, the fear of a British invasion was far greater since Afghanistan had a demarcated boundary with Russia but no such specific boundary existed between Afghanistan and the British Indian territories. Both sides laid claim on certain areas, especially in the North West frontier, and wanted them to be under their respective influence. In order to settle this boundary issue with the British, Amir Abdur Rahman Khan asked for a British delegation to be sent to Kabul in 1888 but the British did not comply at first. Later, many attempts were made by the British to settle the issue but Khan used reasons to delay the matter. Finally, he had to bow to British pressure and once again ask the British India government to send a delegation to settle the border issue – they formed one headed by Sir Mortimer Durand, who was the then foreign secretary in the British India government. As much as he wanted to avoid this delimitation, Khan believed this settlement to be necessary, as is evident in his own writings: ‘Having settled my boundaries with all my other neighbours, I thought it necessary to set out the boundaries between my country and India, so that the boundary line should be definitely marked out around my dominions, as a strong wall for protection.’2
Before inviting the British delegation to Kabul, Abdur Rahman Khan had asked the British government to send him a map with the proposed boundary lines clearly marked out, and to state up front which parts of frontier land they proposed to take under their influence and sphere. The government followed suit but Rahman Khan was not pleased with the map sent to him in which all the countries in Waziri, New Chaman, Chageh, Bulund Khel, Mohmand, Asmar, and Chitral, and other countries lying in between, were marked as belonging to India. To convey his displeasure to the British, he wrote to the Viceroy stating that if the British cut those dominions out of his influence, they would be of no use to them either since the tribes that inhabited the region would not stop their plundering raids on British columns. He also believed that since the people of these dominions were of the same religion as him, he would be better suited to rule over them. Upon receiving no reaction on this, Amir invited a delegation to Kabul nevertheless, however reluctantly.
A photograph of Amir Abdur Rahman Khan (1880), and a sketch of Sir Mortimer Durand
The delegation was well received and negotiations ended with the formulation of the Durand Line. An agreement between the two sides was signed on 12 November 1893 by Amir Abdur Rahman Khan and Henry Mortimer Durand, commonly known as the Durand Line Agreement. In the words of Vartan Gregorian, ‘In 1893, caught between Russian pressure, British intransigence, and his own unwillingness and unpreparedness to start a war with the Government in India, Abdur Rahman signed the Durand Agreement.’3 The agreement stated:
Whereas certain questions have arisen regarding the frontier of Afghanistan on the side of India, and whereas both His Highness the Amir and the Government of India are desirous of settling these questions by friendly understanding, and of fixing the limit of their respective sphere of influence, so that for the future there may no difference of opinion on the subject between the allied Governments, it is hereby agreed as follows:
1. The eastern and southern frontier of His Highness’s dominions, from Wakhan to the Persian border, shall follow the line shown in the map attached to this agreement.
2. The Government of India will at no time exercise interference in the territories lying beyond this line on the side of Afghanistan, and His Highness the Amir will at no time exercise interference in the territories lying beyond this line on the side of India.
3. The British Government thus agrees to His Highness the Amir retaining Asmar and the valley above it, as far as Chanak. His Highness agrees, on the other hand, that he will at no time exercise interference in Swat, Bajaur, or Chitral, including the Arnawai or Bashgal valley. The British Government also agrees to leave to His Highness the Birmal tract as shown in the detailed map already given to His Highness, who relinquishes his claim to the rest of the Waziri country and Dawar. His Highness also relinquishes his claim to Chageh.
4. The frontier line will hereafter be laid down in detail and demarcated, wherever this may be practicable and desirable, by joint British and Afghan commissi
ons, whose object will be to arrive by mutual understanding at a boundary which shall adhere with the greatest possible exactness to the line shown in the map attached to this agreement, having due regard to the existing local rights of villages adjoining the frontier.
5. With reference to the question of Chaman, the Amir withdraws his objection to the new British cantonment and concedes to the British Government the rights purchased by him in the Sirkai Tilerai water. At this part of the frontier the line will be drawn as follows:
From the crest of the Khwaja Amran range near the Psha Kotal, which remains in British territory, the line will run in such a direction as to leave Murgha Chaman and the Sharobo spring to Afghanistan, and to pass half-way between the New Chaman Fort and the Afghan outpost known locally as Lashkar Dand. The line will then pass halfway between the railway station and the hill known as the Mian Baldak, and turning south-wards, will rejoin the Khwaja Amran range, leaving the Gwasha Post in British territory, and the road to Shorawak to the west and south of Gwasha in Afghanistan. The British Government will not exercise any interference within a mile of the road.
6. The above articles of agreement are regarded by the Government of India and His Highness the Amir of Afghanistan as a full and satisfactory settlement of all the principal differences of opinion which have arisen between them in regard to the frontier; and both the Government of India and His Highness the Amir undertake that any differences of detail, such as those which will have be considered hereafter by the officers appointed to demarcate the boundary line, shall be settled in a friendly spirit, so as to remove for the future as far as possible all causes of doubt and misunderstanding between the two Governments.