by Kiran Nirvan
7. Being fully satisfied of His Highness’s good will to the British Government, and wishing to see Afghanistan independent and strong, the Government of India will raise no objection to the purchase and import by His Highness of munitions of war, and they will themselves grant him some help in this respect. Further, in order to mark their sense of the friendly spirit in which His Highness the Amir has entered into these negotiations, the Government of India undertake to increase by the sum of six lakhs of rupees a year the subsidy of twelve lakhs now granted to His Highness.
The Amir of Afghanistan and the British India government formed joint commissions in accordance with the agreement which demarcated the boundary line from Chitral to the Iranian border by setting up pillars only in the sections where both the sides agreed upon the Line. This boundary line came to be known as the Durand Line, which is also the present Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
The Durand Line
The Uprising
The demarcation of a boundary between Afghanistan and India was not accepted in good faith by the tribesmen who lived in the frontier region from where the boundary was supposed to pass. Establishment of military posts by the British along the frontier added to the fear of the tribes who were already apprehensive about the idea of invasion. The Afridis and Orakzais revolted, stating that British encroachment upon their territory and interference with their tribal customs along with a hike in salt tax is what led them to revolt. Even to Rahman Khan, the idea of a boundary was distasteful at first. It took immense patience and countless negotiations before he allowed the British delegation to visit Kabul. None of the Afghans, including the Amir, wanted a change in their regime. Historians believe that the reason he agreed to sign the Durand agreement could be that he wanted the frontier tribes to act as a cushion between Afghanistan and India, with them now troubling India, so that his own territory remained secluded and safe from the reach of the British administration. The British also believed that the Amir spread the idea of jihad among all followers4
Another reason for Muslims to follow his instructions or preaching was that the Amir had assumed the title of Zia-ul-Millat wa ud-Din which meant ‘The Light of Union and Faith’, calling himself the King of Islam, which was reason enough for blind followers of Islam to heed the Amir’s words. Of course, these are assumptions are based on the reading of various books on the history of British-Afghan relations in the nineteenth century, and judgment must be left to individual discretion.
The study of this history also revealed that the Amir had maintained friendly relations with the British government. Upon receiving a letter from the British concerning his participation in the wars at Tirah, the Amir replied with a letter denying all or any responsibility in the tribal uprising. Furthermore, he repudiated all connections with the revolting tribesmen in a move to restore favour with the British government. His participation in inciting the tribesmen could still be true and is therefore left open for debate but, officially, he had no role to play once the revolt broke out. There also exists evidence pertaining to this fact. After carrying out the initial attacks on the Samana range in August 1897, the tribesmen requested the Amir for his support by sending a few important men of their tribes to deliver petition letters written by their mullahs dated 7 September 1897, the correctly interpreted purport of which is as follows5:
We have plundered and destroyed five posts on the Samana above Hangu… There are, however, three big forts on top of Samana (Fort Lockhart, Fort Saragarhi and Fort Gulistan) which have not been taken yet. By the grace of God we will destroy and burn these also. All the people of Tirah have taken up their position on the top of Samana; and at its base from Kohat to Rud-i-Kurman in the district of Kurram, the frontier of the Orakzai runs, and the tribesmen have been making jihad from time to time within their respective limits… We will never consent to tender our allegiance to the British government, and become their subjects. We will never give up the reins of authority of our country to the hands of the government. On the contrary, we are willing to tender our alliance to the King of Islam [Amir Abdur Rahman Khan]. It is incumbent on the Government of Islam not only to look after our interests, and consider our position, but that of the whole of Afghanistan… We are at present engaged in a jihad on Samana range, and we request that your Highness will be pleased to do what is for our good and benefit; and by the grace of God, we will act up to your Highness’ instructions, because we leave the conduct and management of our affairs in the hands of your Highness in every respect… All the Muslims are now at the disposal of your Highness in the shape of regular troops, artillery, and money. If the British prove victorious, they will ruin the Muslims. The services to be done on this side may be left to us by your Highness. We hope that after the perusal of our petition your Highness will favour us with a reply.
These petitions, when carefully studied, display the edginess that must have gripped the tribesmen on realizing the gravity of the situation they had put themselves in, and that they alone would be unable to turn the tide in their favour, since the British government was not one to be underestimated, especially when it had the support and service of local soldiers at their disposal. Their initial attacks launched against British posts in Samana were enough for the tribesmen to know that their siege of the forts was not going to be carried out without heavy casualties. A bolt from the blue for them, however, came when the Amir sent his reply to the tribesmen on 23 September, turning down their appeal in order to avoid the wrath of the British. He, of course, stated various reasons in his attempt to appear just, as he also did not wish for the tribes to abandon him while he was in power. The same is evident in his reply6:
I have perused your petitions, all of which were with one object. I now write to you in reply that it is eighteen years since I came to Kabul, and you know yourselves that I went to Rawal Pindi in April 1885 by the Khyber route. In consideration of my friendship with the British government I had gone to their country as their guest, and on my way I found many of your tribesmen on both sides of the Pass, who made salaams [salutes] to me. If what you state now is true, why did you not tell me at that time about the matter, so that I might have conferred with H E the Viceroy about it? Some years after this, when the boundary was being laid down, Sir Mortimer Durand passed through the Khyber and came to Kabul. All the frontier tribesmen knew of this, and saw the Mission with their own eyes. Why did not then your Mullahs, and Maliks, and Elders come to me when Sir Mortimer Durand came with authority to settle the boundary, so that I could have discussed the matter with him? At that time you all remained silent, and silence indicates consent. I do not know on what account now a breach has taken place between you and the English. But after you have fought with them, and displeased them, you inform me. I have entered into an alliance with the British government in regard to matters of State, and up to the present time no breach of the agreement has occurred from the side of the British, notwithstanding that they are Christians. We are Muslims and followers of the religion of the Prophet, and also of the four Khalifas of the Prophet. How can we then commit a breach of an agreement! [...] Therefore, on the day of the resurrection the first question will be about the observance of agreements. Infidels and Muslims will thus be distinguished by this test. You will thus see that the matter of the agreement is of great importance. I will never, without cause or occasion, swerve from an agreement, because the English, up to the present time, have in no way departed from the line of boundary laid down in the map they have agreed upon with me. Then why should I do so? To do so will be far from justice. I cannot, at the instance of a few interested people, bring ignominy on myself and my people. What you have done with your own hands you must now carry on your own backs. I have nothing to do with you. You are the best judge of your affairs. Now that you have got into trouble you want me to help you. You have allowed the time when matters might have been ameliorated to slip by. Now I cannot say or do anything…
Between the time the tribesmen made their request and the Ami
r’s reply, the battle of Saragarhi had already taken place. Much had, by now, become evident to the tribesmen who had faced stiff resistance while fighting the British Indian Army. History had already been written in Samana and the ruins of Saragarhi continued to haunt the Pashtuns throughout the campaign of Tirah.
1Hutchinson, H.D., The Campaign in Tirah 1897-98, London: Macmillan & Co., 1898.
2Wahed Alikuzai, Hamid, A Concise History of Afghanistan in 25 Volumes: Volume 14, Trafford Publishing, 2013
3Wahed Alikuzai, Hamid, A Concise History of Afghanistan in 25 Volumes: Volume 14, Trafford Publishing, 2013.
4Hutchinson, H.D., The Campaign in Tirah 1897-98, London: Macmillan & Co., 1898.
5Ibid.
6Ibid.
9
The Attack on the Samana Forts
The breach in the wall was almost complete and it was only a matter of time before it fell. Meanwhile, the fort’s wooden gate, already riddled with rifle shots, went up in flames. Havildar Ishar Singh, who could see the horde of Afghans doubling their efforts now that entry into the fort was within reach, murmured, ‘Waheguru meher karo (God be with us),’ not in fear or fright, but as a request to the Almighty to give him and his brothers in arms enough strength to fight the 10,000 now ready to pounce on them. Being an exemplary leader, he ordered the remaining soldiers to move inside the chambers while he stood in front of the weakened gate, ready to face the Pathans. However, after assessing the situation, the young Sepoy Jiwan Singh picked up his rifle and took position next to his leader. Another young Sepoy positioned himself next to Ishar Singh towards his left flank.
‘I ordered you to move inside,’ Ishar Sigh said with his gaze fixed at the door.
‘No. We are staying by your side and fighting with you,’ insisted the two soldiers.
‘By staying, you will be defying my order for the first time,’ Ishar said.
‘…and the last time,’ was Jiwan’s stubborn answer.
Ishar Singh glanced at his men and nodded, knowing that they understood what they were facing. As the gate in front of them fell and wave after wave of bloodthirsty Pathans swarmed inside the Saragarhi post, the three men rushed forward to defend what was theirs until their last breath.
~
Now that we are familiar with the socio-political situation that led to the unrest in Tirah in the autumn of 1897, we can delve into the series of battles as they played out in the region at the time. The operations of the British Indian Army in Tirah, a wild and difficult stretch of land, tested the grit and proficiency of its soldiers (including those of the 36th Sikhs) more seriously than anything they had ever faced before. In fact, for most of the young soldiers, it constituted their first-ever field experience, a fact that made their heroics even more awe-inspiring. Post 1880, when the British built forts along the frontier and deployed troops to protect the passes and trade routes, primarily the Khyber and Kohat passes, the tribesmen who felt their territorial integrity had been breached, began to demand that forces should be withdrawn from Samana and Swat valleys. When their demand fell on deaf ears, the tribesmen, urged by their mullahs, began to assemble their fighting force with an aim to declare war on the imperial government, besiege their forts and close the Khyber Pass. The Orakzais and Afridis had the capability to muster a fighting strength of 40–50,000 provided all their factions fought together, but many of them chose to sit out the war. Their approximate fighting force, the one that participated in the Tirah revolt, is said to be around 20–25,000 men strong. Intelligence about the fighting numbers had reached the British government’s military headquarters, but it came too late – the tribesmen attacked in the end of August 1897, and went on to capture and burn British outposts on the Khyber Ridge, Landi Kotal, Fort Maude and Ali Masjid between 23 and 25 August. In the face of this ruthless attack, the British Indian government had to respond, which they did by planning an expedition where a large number of troops were mobilized under the command of General William Lockhart, who had joined the British Indian Army as an officer in 1858 and was later made the Commander-in-Chief in 1898. This was officially called the Tirah Expeditionary Force, and also included the 36th Sikhs.
After being moved back to Delhi from Manipur in 1894, the 36th Sikhs received orders to move to frontiers in the North West region. In November 1894, the unit marched to Ludhiana from Delhi on foot. In April 1895, after spending almost five months training in Ludhiana, the unit moved to Bannu via train, from where it left for Peshawar, arriving there in the same month. In December 1896, shortly before Christmas, the 36th Sikhs moved once again, this time from Peshawar to Kohat, from where it was sent to garrison the Samana forts. Before their departure, an inspection was carried out by Brigadier General E.R. Ellis to check the unit’s readiness for the task ahead. His farewell order says it all:
I am extremely sorry to lose such a fine regiment from my command. Since they have been at Peshawar, the conduct and soldier-like bearing of the regiment has been in every way excellent and I am well pleased with the regiment in every aspect. As long as we have regiments like this in the Native Army, we need never be afraid of anything. I hope they may soon have a chance of active service and I wish them every luck where they may be.
Defence of the Samana Forts
Fort Cavagnari
The 36th Sikhs’s task was to start from Kohat and advance towards Tirah, taking up defences in the forts on the Samana ridge. Tirah, the summer home of the tribesmen, had never before been visited by the British. The 36th Sikhs occupied positions on the crest of Samana ridge at a height, strengthening its forts – namely, Fort Lockhart (or Fort Mastan) and Fort Cavagnari (or Fort Gulistan), 18 and 24 kilometres west of Hangu respectively. Both these forts were rectangular in shape and had walls made of stone which ran as high as 12 to 15 feet. In each fort, flank defence was provided by loopholed bastions at diagonally opposite corners. Fort Lockhart had the capacity to hold 300 men and Fort Cavagnari could hold almost 200. In addition, piquet posts, designed in the same fashion and similarly protected by loopholed bastions, were established at Saragarhi – a minor fort attached to a small village with largely Orakzai inhabitants – that lay in between Fort Lockhart and Fort Cavagnari, about three kilometres from former and about four kilometres from the latter.
View of Saragarhi from Fort Cavagnari
There existed other minor piquet posts as well between the two posts at Dhar, Sartop, Crag and Sangar. Each minor piquet could accommodate 25 to 40 men. Saragarhi, however, was held by 21 men and a non-combatant sweeper/helper. The fort of Saragarhi stood at a height of approximately 6,000 feet and was equipped with barracks for men, a guard room and a water storage facility. It derived its importance from its utility as a heliograph relay post (see next section) – since a direct line of sight was not available between Fort Lockhart and Fort Cavagnari, Saragarhi was set up to convey messages between the two bastions.
View of Fort Lockhart from Saragarhi
View of Orakzai country from the Saragarhi post
Heliograph Relay
Signalling has been an important aspect of war for years and signal equipment has been used by various armies to pass critical information, often changing the course of war. The torch telegraph was used by the Greeks, the Romans used coloured smoke as a means of passing signals and the English used beacons in the sixteenth century. For hundreds of years, long range communication relied primarily on individuals transporting messages and was only possible by using horsemen, ships, wagons, etc. This was until 1836, when a well-known painter and keen amateur inventor called Samuel Morse invented the Morse code – a character encoding scheme used in communication that encodes characters as sequences of two different signal durations called dots and dashes. Then came a device called a heliograph, which used Morse codes as light beams to pass information. To put it in plainer words, a heliograph is a device that uses flashes of sunlight reflected by a mirror to transmit signals. The beam of light falls on the mirror which can be interrupted using a shutter to p
roduce flashes of varying length. Carl Friedrich Gauss, a German professor, is said to have come up with the idea of the device which could direct a controlled beam of sunlight to a distant station. However, the credit of developing the first widely accepted heliograph goes to Henry Christopher Mance of the British Government Persian Gulf Telegraph Department who developed it in 1869 while he was posted in Karachi, then a part of British India.
The Mance Heliograph was a lightweight device weighing only about nine kilograms and required only one man to operate it effectively, as well as to carry it over distances. In one of the tests of this heliograph, the British Army was able to successfully send a signal over a distance of 55 kilometres, after which the device was inducted into the British Army’s inventory and was first used in the Jowaki-Afridi expedition of 18771. It soon became an important means of communication and was used for more than 60 years after its development.
The heliograph formed a mobile element in the British Signal units after having proven its worth in the field of communication during war. Using a heliograph allowed eight to sixteen words to be transmitted per minute, and the equipment was relatively cheap and easy to produce. However, one of the limitations of this device was that it could only be used in the presence of sunlight and not during night. Another factor that limited the use of heliograph as a means of communication was line of sight. A line of sight clear from obstructions was necessary between the sender and receiver to receive light flashes, since we all are aware that light beams travel in a straight line. To overcome this limitation, relay posts began to be used. In this, a signal relay post was set up between two points not in line of sight but in line of sight with the relay post. The sender sent the message to the relay post, which recorded and transmitted the same message to the receiver, thereby acting as an intermediary repeater. The fort at Saragarhi, being a heliograph signal relay post, was equipped with the same task and thereby held importance for effective signal communication between Fort Lockhart and Fort Cavagnari.