The Camel Merchant of Philadelphia

by Sarbpreet Singh

  Several accounts suggest that she accompanied him to Hardwar after they got married for a ritual dip in the Ganges considered holy by Hindus, which seems ironical because the king was a Sikh and his new bride, a Muslim. It is well-known that Moran continued to live the life of a devout Muslim woman after her marriage, without any objections from her husband.

  Her presence in history books and travel accounts becomes more shadowy after her marriage to the king. The next reference to Moran appears in 1808 during the visit of the British envoy, Metcalfe, to Amritsar.

  A letter written by Metcalfe to a Mr. Edmondstone on 14 December, 1808, makes for interesting reading. Metcalfe had been sent to negotiate a treaty of friendship with Ranjit Singh, to pre-empt a Franco-Russian invasion, which the British feared. In the letter, Metcalfe, who was exasperated at the slow pace of the discussions, comments on Ranjit Singh’s hurried departure from Amrtisar, where they had been in discussions, to Lahore. Metcalfe writes that Ranjit Singh was highly distracted during the negotiations because of disturbances in Amritsar on account of his favourite, a ‘Mussulmanee dancing-girl’. The king had brought his favourite with him as he enjoyed her company more than that of any of his wives or concubines. She, however managed to get herself into hot water because she induced a young Hindu man to convert to Islam. The conversion apparently caused a huge furore. The priests of the Golden Temple issued a proclamation shutting down the bazaars and commerce came to a grinding halt. Hindu mobs attacked the homes of Muslim courtesans and ransacked them. Ranjit Singh seemed powerless in the face of the religious fury and beat a hasty retreat to Lahore with his favourite in tow!

  The favourite ‘Mussulmanee dancing-girl’ referred to by Metcalfe was none other than Bibi Moran, who evidently was influential enough to encourage a Hindu youth to convert to Islam, an act which, she surely must have been aware, was bound to attract attention and create excitement among the Hindu community.

  In his work, Lahore: Its History, Architectural Remains and Antiquities, Syed Muhammad Latif writes about a prominent landmark of Lahore, the tomb of the Sufi master Shah Hussain and his Hindu lover Madho Lal and the mosque located close to it. This mosque was constructed by Ranjit Singh for Bibi Moran and was known as the Masjid-e-Tawaif (The Mosque of the Courtesan) until a few years ago. It is now known as Masjid-e-Moran.

  After her marriage to Ranjit Singh, no longer a courtesan, Bibi Moran began to live the life of a devout Muslim woman. Her spiritual guide, Mian Jan Mohammamd had great influence on her. Interestingly, Mian Jan Mohammad, at one point served in the army of Ranjit Singh! Popular tradition holds that he had a spiritual awakening and decided to quit military service to become a Muslim Pir (holy man). It is said that Moran, who unlike her father and Mian Samdu, fervently wanted Ranjit Singh’s initial attraction to turn into something more, sought his blessing, which she received. After her marriage, she remained devoted to the Pir and sought his guidance on all matters spiritual. The Pir was pleased when Ranjit Singh built a mosque for his wife, but he suggested to the young queen, that while there were several mosques in Lahore, she would serve the citizens better by building a maddrassa (Islamic school). From its humble beginnings in the mosque of Moran, this school evolved into a renowned centre of learning, attended by hundreds of scholars of all communities, some even from Iran and Arabia.36 Multiple accounts suggest that Ranjit Singh was deeply attached to Moran. Several historians have made references to coins that Ranjit Singh struck in her name. J.D. Cunningham, the British author of one of the earliest accounts of the Sikhs, writes about this, claiming that so great was Moran’s influence that in 1811, coins and medals were struck bearing her name.37

  Other accounts suggest that some coins minted during Ranjit Singh’s reign bear the image of a peacock feather as a tribute to Moran, who was said to dance like a peacock! Apparently, the coin created such a furore that it was withdrawn, only to be replaced by another one with an imprint of Moran’s ring.

  Numismatist Surinder Singh, however, claims that the legend of the ‘Moranshahi Sikka’ (the coin of Queen Moran) is just that—a myth! 38 According to him, references to such a coin by travellers such as Baron von Hugel, and V. Jacquemont and later historians such as J.D. Cunningham and Lepel Griffin are nothing but a reiteration of bazaar gossip. While thousands of artefacts are available from this period, not one Moranshahi coin has been found. Surinder Singh suggests that his theory is borne out by lack of numismatic evidence and a close study of the position of concubines in early nineteenth-century society.

  Baron Hugel, who visited Ranjit Singh’s court, provides yet another perspective on the Moranshahi coin, suggesting that it was minted as a joke at the expense of the British East India Company as the Company was often referred to as the mistress of the King of England!

  Ranjit Singh settled an estate upon Moran in Pathankot. Many historical accounts state that she was ‘sent’ there in 1811, suggesting that she had fallen out of the king’s favour. While this may seem plausible, given Ranjit Singh’s subsequent marriages and dalliances, this is belied by an incident reported in the Umdat Ut Twarikh, the official record of Ranjit Singh’s court, written by Sohan Lal Suri.

  In October 1831, a grand spectacle unfolded on the banks of the Sutlej at Ropar. The Maharaja of Punjab met with the British Governor General, Lord William Bentinck. The Maharaja’s escort consisted of 10,000 cavalry and 6,000 regular infantry commanded by his European officers. The British force consisted of two squadrons of the 16th Lancers and two of irregular cavalry, eight guns of horse artillery, the 31st Regiment and two battalions of Bengal infantry. A bridge of boats had been placed across the river. The Maharaja crossed the river on 26th October and the meeting began with great pomp and ceremony.

  Sohan Lal Suri has poignantly captured, perhaps unwittingly, a tiny snapshot of the love that Ranjit Singh bore for Bibi Moran, who was a coquettish maiden no more, but a middle-aged woman by then. According to his account, the Maharaja, on the morning of 30 October, 1831, met with his advisors Bhai Ram Singh and Bhai Gobind Ram and recounted the events of the previous night, when he had received the British Governor General, Lord Bentinck and his wife, Lady Bentnick. 39 The Governor General, upon the arrival of his wife by boat, personally went forward to receive her, took her hand with great tenderness and conveyed her to a chair, his affection for her very apparent. Ranjit Singh expressed that he felt the very same kind of affection for Bibi Moran and could not bear to be parted from her for even a moment!

  A full twenty years after the supposed banishment to Pathankot, it seems that Ranjit Singh still carried a torch for Bibi Moran.

  Ranjit Singh was a complex man in many different ways.

  Almost every account by travellers, who visited his court talks about the abundance of courtesans, dancing girls and other women dedicated to the pleasure of the king and his guests.

  Mohan Lal Kashmiri, the munshi or secretary to Sir Alexander Burnes, who visited Ranjit Singh’s court and was a great admirer of his, criticises him for the air of easy familiarity that these courtesans were allowed to adopt with the king:

  Ranjit Singh talked for an hour with a smiling aspect and good humour with Mr Burnes and Dr. Gerard. He sent for dancing-girls, and placed them before us, joking with them in the open court, which ill-becomes a monarch, and is improper in the opinion of the wise.40

  Baron Hugel provides a detailed account of the dancing girls in Ranjit Singh’s court. Hugel expresses great admiration for the dancing girls of Lahore, who according to him, undergo extensive training since the tender age of five in the twin arts of singing and dancing.41 Despite noting that ‘this two-fold art is not in accordance with European tastes’, he expresses admiration for the clearness of the voices and the precision of their step! His description of their attire provides a rare window into life in Ranjit Singh’s court, which is certainly not found in the accounts of official biographers such as Sohan Lal:

  Their dress consists of coloured silk trousers, fitting tight below, and
fastened round the waist by a band and tassels which hang as low as the knee. Over this falls a tunic of white muslin, reaching only half way down the leg, and a shawl is thrown over the figure in coming and going away. Such, in short, is their house costume. When dancing they put on a very wide garment of various colours, mingled with gold, which covers them from the shoulders to the ankles.

  Hugel’s description of the dance is no less colourful:

  … the performance begins with the amatory songs, the dancer standing at the far end of the room, the musicians behind her. She steps forward and the soft slow music becomes louder and quicker, as the expression becomes more impassioned; the dancer, describing either hope or fear, moves rapidly from side to side, and the whole usually concludes with an imitation of despair. Their greatest beauty is the delicacy of their feet and hands, which seem quite peculiar to themselves, and the freedom and grace of their action are inimitable.

  Another feature of Ranjit Singh’s court, which was often on display when he had guests was his Zenana Corps, which was a regiment of beautiful young women, dressed like soldiers! They were faithfully trotted out whenever there were visiting dignitaries and could put on a great show with dances and mock battles. These women were given military ranks such as Jemadar and Subedar and often appeared mounted on horses or elephants. Despite the trappings of soldiery, the Corps was clearly created for the king’s amusement.

  An encounter with Ranjit Singh’s ‘Amazons’ is colourfully described by W.G. Osborne, military secretary to the Governor General of India, the Earl of Auckland after a visit to Ranjit Singh’s court:

  In the evening, a detachment of the Amazons arrived with music and fireworks. The establishment of this corps was one of Runjeet Sing’s capricious whims, and the result of one of those drinking bouts which were his delight. There were originally about one hundred and fifty of these fair warriors, who were selected from the prettiest girls from Kashmir, Persia, and the Punjab. They were magnificently dressed, armed with bows and arrows, and used frequently to appear on horseback, mounted en cavalier, for the amusement of the Maharajah.

  One dance by the young Kashmiran girls, with single sticks in their hands as they met in mimic combat, keeping time to a slow and graceful movement of their feet, had the effect of castanets, and was altogether both pretty and singular. At the conclusion of the evening’s entertainment, the Maharajah’s head man informed us that it was his master’s wish that we should take such of them as pleased us best, and retain them in our service.42

  Like the kings of his time, Ranjit Singh was a much-married man. There are divergent accounts of the number of wives in his harem. Hari Ram Gupta enumerates twenty, ten of whom he married in formal wedding ceremonies and ten through the ritual of ‘chaddar-daalna’ (the covering with a sheet) which enabled him to take the wives and daughters of fallen foes as wife (a victor took the women of the vanquished ‘under his protection’). Fakir Syed Waheeduddin puts the strength of the harem at forty-six, counting nine each in the two categories mentioned by Hari Ram Gupta, as well as twenty-eight courtesans and concubines.

  Hari Ram Gupta’s view is most likely based on British accounts such as Sir Lepel Griffin’s.43 According to Lepel Griffin, Ranjit Singh had eighteen wives; of these, nine were married in formal ceremonies and nine were taken under the custom of ‘chaddar daalna’. Griffin’s remarks about the paternity of Ranjit Singh’s sons need to be taken with a grain of salt, given the multiple layers of intrigue normal in a palace around succession as well the added dimension of the eventual British annexation of Punjab, which in British eyes probably necessitated the de-legitimising of Ranjit Singh’s progeny.

  Ranjit Singh married his first wife Mehtab Kaur in 1786, a match which was instrumental in propelling him to power as she was the granddaughter of the powerful Jai Singh, leader of the Kanhaya Misl. Several British writers including Lepel Griffin claim that her mother, the widow Sada Kaur, a truly remarkable woman who realised that her daughter must produce an heir to retain influence procured a boy during one of the Maharaja’s expeditions and passed him off as her daughter’s. The child, named Ishar Singh, apparently only lived a year and a half causing Sada Kaur to plot again. News was spread that Mehtab Kaur was pregnant, and on the king’s return from another expedition, twin sons, Sher Singh and Tara Singh, were presented to him, one purchased from a chintz-weaver, and the other the child of a slave girl in her service!

  In 1798, Ranjit Singh married Raj Kaur, the daughter of Ram Singh, head of the powerful Nakai Misl. This served to consolidate his power further and much to his delight, she gave birth to Kharak Singh, Ranjit Singh’s firstborn son.

  Another prominent wife of Ranjit Singh was Jindan, whom he married at a fairly advanced age. She was the daughter of Manna Singh, a trooper in the service of the palace. With her quick wit and vivacious personality she attracted the notice of the old Maharaja and was taken into the harem. It is also alleged that an affair with a water-carrier by the name of Gulu resulted in the birth of Duleep Singh, who was accepted as Ranjit Singh’s youngest son.

  The tense, highly charged atmosphere of the harem, with a subtext of intrigue around succession, power and influence often resulted in strange and unintended consequences.

  One of Ranjit Singh’s lifelong adversaries was the proud Raja Sansar Chand of the hill kingdom of Kangra, who was a reluctant vassal and often rebelled against the king until finally he was deposed after Ranjit Singh’s battle against the Gurkhas (see chapter ‘Lahure’). After Sansar Chand passed away in December 1823, Ranjit Singh sent his Sardars with condolences, and permitted the coronation of Anirudh Chand as Raja and head of the Katoch clan. On a visit to Lahore in 1827, an unexpected crisis developed for Raja Anirudh. Maharaja Ranjit Singh had conquered the Dogra country of Jammu and had handed it over to a junior branch of the Jammu royal family in his employ, headed by Raja Gulab Singh Dogra. His younger brother Dhian Singh had a son named Hira Singh, whom Maharaja Ranjit Singh doted on and referred to as ‘farzand-i-khas-ul-khas’ (most special son), and demanded the hand of Anirudh’s sister for him.

  Hira Singh was a Rajput, but he was not a king, which made him inferior to Anirudh Chand’s family. The Katoch ruler was on the horns of a dilemma. He could not directly refuse but at the same time, his prickly pride would not allow him to accept a match that he considered dishonourable. On the pretext of making wedding arrangements, Anirudh left Lahore for Kangra, and promptly wed his two sisters to the Raja of Garhwal, whose blood was as blue as his own. Ranjit Singh, enraged by this defiance, attacked Kangra with his forces, and Raja Anirudh sought refuge in British territory. Ranjit Singh confirmed Fateh Chand, younger brother to Sansar Chand as the new Raja of Kangra, and married two of Raja Sansar Chand’s daughters.

  Their names were Mehtab Devi, also known as Guddan, and Raj Banso. They married Ranjit Singh in 1828. Patwant Singh, in The Sikhs, writes that the two sisters, who were reputed to be very beautiful, became Ranjit Singh’s favourite queens and exercised great influence over him. Rani Mehtab Devi, in particular, was a woman of refinement and had multiple interests. At Lahore, she introduced the art of phulkārī embroidery, arranged marriages of orphan girls and established a school of hill music and dance. She also had a fine collection of hill miniatures and her palace was a treasure of art.

  By that time, Bibi Moran was no longer resident in Lahore, but as this story will show, the Maharaja was as attached to her as ever. Syed Waheeduddin recounts the following incident that occurred in 1835.44

  A special durbar was in progress in Lahore. It had been arranged exclusively for the entertainment of all the maharanis (queens) and the king’s concubines. A dancing girl named Allah Jowai was being rewarded for a scintillating performance. On a whim, Ranjit Singh turned to Allah Jowai and asked, ‘Tell me! Which of my maharanis is the most beautiful?’ Allah Jowai broke out into a sweat for she feared offending any of the proud queens. Finally, after being put on the spot and realising that she would not be dismissed without an
swering the king’s question, she pointed to Maharani Raj Banso and said, ‘This maharani is the moon of your harem and the rest, its stars!’ Maharani Raj Banso beamed with pride until, just as Allah Jowai was leaving, Ranjit Singh asked again, ‘But is she more beautiful than Moran?’ So incensed was the blue-blooded maharani at being compared to a courtesan that she stormed out of the durbar, marched to her room, consumed a large dose of opium and lay down, never to wake again. The grief-stricken Maharaja was filled with remorse and performed her last rites with his own hands.

  Raj Banso’s sister, Rani Guddan, was also to meet with an unusual and spectacular end. On the morning after the death of the Maharaja, Dr. Honigberger, accompanied by Colonel Henry Steinbach, who served Raja Gulab Singh Dogra started to make their way to the yard, where the cremation was to occur. They saw Maharani Mehtab Devi, also known as Guddan, coming out of the harem on foot, unveiled in public for the first time in her life. She was accompanied by three other queens. She walked slowly and gracefully, surrounded by close to a hundred people, who kept a respectful distance. By her side walked a man carrying a chest filled with her jewellery, which she handed out piece by piece to the people thronging around her. Three steps ahead of her a man walked backwards, facing her and holding up a looking glass so that the proud maharani could satisfy herself that there wasn’t a trace of fear on her face. Honigberger had been present at her wedding eleven years earlier, when he had arrived at Ranjit Singh’s court, but of course he had never seen her face before. He had heard rumours that her sister Maharani Raj Banso had died earlier of consumption. The story of her suicide, of course, had been buried.