The Camel Merchant of Philadelphia

by Sarbpreet Singh

  The procession, accompanied by thousands of spectators, was now slowly moving towards the funeral pile. Everyone was on foot except for the four queens, who were carried in open palanquins behind Ranjit Singh’s body. Seven female slaves followed the queens, barefoot, some no more than fourteen or fifteen years old. The queens too were barefoot, dressed in very simple clothes and completely unadorned with any jewellery. The Maharaja’s body was placed on a board and was carried on an ornate bier constructed in the shape of a ship with sails made of fine golden silk and finely embroidered Kashmiri shawls. A number of people carried the bier from the interior of the fortress up to the funeral pile and there, the board with the body was placed on the ground. The expensive ornaments adorning the richly decorated bier were given to the throng, Brahmins chanted prayers from the Hindu Shastras and the Sikh priests sang hymns from their scriptures. The Muslims in the assemblage chanted ‘Ya Allah’ in unison to the accompaniment of slow and stately drum beats.

  The funeral pile was constructed of dry sandalwood and aloe and was about six feet high and square-shaped. The prayers lasted almost an hour after which the prominent courtiers and the late king’s sons climbed up to the funeral pile and respectfully placed Ranjit Singh’s body on top. Solemnly, the queens, lead by Maharani Guddan ascended ladders placed on the side, followed by the seven slave girls and settled themselves on the funeral pile, the queens seated by the dead king’s head and the slaves by his feet. There they waited stoically for the end. A strong thick mat of reeds was used to cover the funeral pile, then doused in ghee and lighted at each corner. The funeral pyre blazed and in a few minutes it was all over.45

  Little is known about Moran’s last days. It is known however that she lived out her life as a pious Muslim woman. In 1824, Ranjit Singh built a mosque for her within the walled city of Lahore. History books are silent on the subject of her death. The last known reference to Moran is in Baron Hugel’s book; he met her in Pathankot around 1835. A recent article in the Daily Times, Lahore, claims that after the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Moran moved to her house in Bazaar Chowk Chakkla in Lahore.46 Also, after the death of the Maharaja she spent most of her time and money trying to set up Persian and Punjabi language schools. She passed away around 1862 and was probably buried in the Miani Sahib graveyard in Lahore. Her grave has never been found.

  The personal life of Maharaja Ranjit Singh will always be difficult to fully understand. Rumour, innuendo, salacious gossip, the Victorian sensibilities of his British biographers and the reticence of his Punjabi ones mingle to create pictures that are a tantalising mix of vivid detail and obscurity. The half-realised portrait of the ‘Dancing Girl of Lahore’ that this piece represents is a perfect example of one.

  ‘LAHURE’

  Growing up in Sikkim surrounded by Nepalese culture, I can never forget the ubiquity of Nepalese folk songs, several of which, I remember, were a source of great merriment to my children when they were young. The word ‘Lahure’ featured in many songs, both playful and poignant in nature. I never really paid a lot of attention to the word, unmindful of its origin; I knew that it vaguely referred to a soldier, which of course was no surprise, given that soldiering is a profession that has been as commonplace among the Gurkhas as it has among the Sikhs.

  After the Anglo-Gurkha war of 1814-1816 and the Anglo-Sikh Wars of 1846 and 1848-49, the Gurkhas and the Sikhs, both much admired by the British as adversaries, were targeted heavily for recruitment into the British colonial armies. The colonial masters of India maintained that there were certain ‘martial races’, who, because of their ancient military traditions and cultures, the geographies they lived in, and the hard lives they led, were particularly suited to military service. The elite soldiers of the British Raj, came from these groups, in particular, the Sikhs of Punjab and the Gurkhas of Nepal.

  The etymology of the word ‘lahure’ is very interesting and deserves investigation. ‘Lahure culture is threatening Nepal’s sovereignty’ reads the title of an article in Telegraph Nepal.47 Expatriate Nepalese actor Shailesh Shrestha, in an interview in the newspaper Rising Nepal bemoans that while he was ‘… a strong critic of “lahure culture” twelve years back in Nepal, I now find myself no different from a lahure in New York’. According to journalist Mallika Arryal, writing in the Nepal Times, ‘While Lahure has a mostly positive connotation in Nepali language, the word has also transported to anything foreign, like imported buffalo breed of “Lahure Bhaisi”. In fact, the Agriculture Development Bank gives loans only to farmers who want to buy a “Lahure Bhaisi”, and not local ones.’

  Lahure—an interesting word for sure!

  In her article, Arryal goes on to state, ‘Ever since the British Afghan Campaign of 1848 when the new (Gurkha) recruits were sent to the cantonment in Lahore for training, those who left to enlist in the British Army have been called “Lahures” back home.’ This is only partially correct. The British colonial army had started recruiting Gurkhas earlier and in fact, the British force that set out in 1839 from Punjab, under the aegis of the Tripartite Treaty between the British, Maharaja Ranjit Singh and Shah Shuja Al-Mulk, the deposed ruler of Khorasan and the grandson of Ahmad Shah Abdali, to restore Shah Shuja to the throne of Khorasan included several Gurkha soldiers in its ranks.

  The word ‘lahure’, which in the modern Nepalese context refers broadly to something foreign, and to expatriate Nepalis in general, refers specifically to a Gurkha soldier, who serves in a foreign army, definitely has its roots in the early adventures of the Gurkhas in Lahore.

  Behind it however, as you might expect, lies a tale—the tale of the Sikh kirpan and the Gurkha kukhri.*

  Prithvi Narayan Shah (1723–75) was the ruler of a small kingdom known as Gurkha in Nepal, who conquered the three adjoining kingdoms of Kathmandu, Patan, and Bhādgaon in 1769 and consolidated them to found the modern state of Nepal, establishing his capital at Kathmandu. He then annexed Terai (the lowlands of southern Nepal and northern India which is situated south of the outer foothills of the Himalayas, the Siwalik mountains, and north of the Indo-Gangetic Plain), Kumaon, Garhwal, Simla, and Sikkim in northern India, as well as large portions of the Tibetan plateau and the valleys of the inner Himalayas. He and his successors extended Gurkha influence from the borders of Punjab in the west to Sikkim in the east.

  Five years after his passing, Ranjit Singh was born to Sardar Maha Singh Sukerchakia of Gujranwala. A man of great charisma and vision, Ranjit Singh rode the turbulent tides of history to establish a great Sikh empire that stretched from Ladakh and Kashmir in the north to the deserts of Sind in the south; from the boundaries of Khorasan in the west to the Sutlej river in the east.

  The Sikhs and the Gurkhas in the early nineteenth century were both at the zenith of their military power and flushed with the success of conquest.

  The kirpan and the kukhri were inexorably, on a collision course. Steel met steel in the Himalayan hills of Kangra in 1809.

  Kangra was a small kingdom, south of the the Dhauladhar range, a southern branch of the main outer Himalayas. It was ruled by Sansar Chand, a Katoch Rajput Raja of Kangra who ascended the throne in 1775. He was an ambitious ruler and began extending his influence over the neighbouring hill states as well as foothills of the Siwalik mountains. He extended his domain upto Hoshiarpur in Punjab until he was driven back by Maharaja Ranjit Singh in 1804. Sansar Chand then became a vassal of Ranjit Singh and paid tribute to the Lahore court, but the relationship was an uneasy one.

  Amar Singh Thapa, born in 1751, was a protégé of the Gurkha king, Prithvi Narayan Shah, who played a significant role in all the battles fought west of Gorkha during the rule of Bahadur Shah, who ascended the throne after the death of Prithvi Narayan Shah.48 In 1803, Amar Singh Thapa marched westward from Nepal and conquered Garhwal along with Dehradun by defeating the king of Garhwal. His conquests continued until Nepal’s boundary reached the banks of the Sutlej River.

  In 1805, Amar Singh Thapa crossed the Yamuna again and proceeded
to the Himalayan region of modern-day Himachal Pradesh, capturing the kingdoms of Chamba, Nurpur, Kotla, Jasrota, Basauli, Jaswan, Mandi and Kulu. Sansar Chand resisted the Gurkhas, who laid siege to the fort of Kangra for four years. Sansar Chand fought the Gurkhas for as long as he could but finally sought the help of his nominal overlord, Maharaja Ranjit Singh.

  This was the opportunity that Ranjit Singh had been waiting for! Utterly mistrustful of Sansar Chand, Ranjit Singh demanded that the fort of Kangra be ceded to him in return for his help. He also demanded that Sansar Chand’s son, Anirudh Chand be held hostage until the military campaign was concluded as a precondition for helping Sansar Chand. Anirudh Chand was turned over to Ranjit Singh and in hindsight, the precautions were wise because the wily Sansar Chand was in negotiations with Amar Singh Thapa as well, promising him control of the fort of Kangra! His strategy was to make his two powerful adversaries, the Gurkhas and the Sikhs, fight each other to enable him to hold on to the fort himself.

  Ranjit Singh commanded the hill rajas around Kangra to stop selling provisions to the Gurkhas and cut their supply lines from Nepal. He also placed Anirudh Chand under arrest, causing his father to finally cede the fort of Kangra on 24 August, 1809. The Gurkhas hung on until they completely ran out of rations and then began to retreat. The forces of Ranjit Singh pursued them until Amar Singh Thapa placed his soldiers in battle formation on a hillside, a couple of miles from Kangra Fort.

  The Battle of Ganesh Ghati had begun.

  The Gurkhas fought valiantly and easily repulsed the forces of the hill rajas who opened the attack, eager to avenge themselves after years of being humiliated by Amar Singh Thapa. The Sikh artillery had little impact too, as the Gurkhas were well dug in. Ranjit Singh knew that the Gurkhas, who were tired and hungry would not be able to hold off a fierce infantry attack. Now, the Sikhs, armed with long kirpans attacked. The Gurkhas sheathed their short kukhris and fled in disarray.

  Ranjit Singh was very impressed by the valour of Amar Singh Thapa and his men. With the usual magnanimity that he was wont to display to fallen foes who exhibited gallantry, he allowed them to leave unmolested, severely reprimanding and punishing any of the hill rajas who attempted to plunder the retreating Gurkhas. Sansar Chand was given an estate and ceased to be the ruler of Kangra, which was now absorbed into Ranjit Singh’s empire.

  The victorious Ranjit Singh returned to Lahore. Amar Singh Thapa returned to Nepal and continued to rise to become one of the most important generals of the kingdom, with the title ‘Bada Kaji’ (Great Judge).

  Meanwhile, tensions were building between Nepal’s expanding Gurkha Raj and the British East India Company, which was by now virtually the greatest power in the Indian subcontinent. Nepal had begun to encroach on areas controlled by the British, a situation exacerbated by the lack of clear boundaries in the Terai plains between the Himalayan foothills and the states of northern India. An armed conflict was inevitable.

  The British had many reasons for wanting to invade: Nepal’s strategic location, the Nepali trade routes into Tibet and China, the fertile Terai plains and the ‘hill stations’ such as Dehradun and Darjeeling with their cool climate and majestic landscapes. Nepal was increasingly getting in their way. Controlling the vast British territories of northern India was being made more difficult by the task of negotiating Nepal’s expanding borders.

  The Nepalis, under the command of Prime Minister Bhimsen Thapa and Bada Kaji Amar Singh Thapa were confident that they could repel an invading army, given the battle-hardened experience of their forces and their knowledge of Nepal’s difficult terrain. Nepal’s army was 12,000-16,000 strong, while the British had a force of over 35,000 men equipped with modern rifles and artillery.

  The first battle between the Nepalese forces and the British took place in October 1814 near present-day Dehradun. During the Battle of Khalanga (or ‘Nala Pani Ko Ladai’) 600 Gurkhas, including women and children, defended the fort of Khalanga against over 6,500 British soldiers led by the British general, Rollo Gillespie.

  Gillespie was killed early on in fierce fighting, while the Nepali forces, led by General Balbhadra Kunwar (who in other accounts is called Balbhadra Singh, Balbhadra Thapa or Bal Bahadur Thapa), held the fort despite persistent attack and bombardment by the British. The Gurkhas finally abandoned the fort when the British cut off their water supply, their food long since having run out. By then, Balbhadra and his men had held Khalanga for over thirty days under harsh conditions, losing more than 520 of their 600 people, but inflicting heavier casualties on the British. Moved by the astonishing bravery and sense of honour with which the Gurkhas fought, the British erected a memorial to honour both them and their own fallen general. On the memorial, which still stands today, are inscribed the words: ‘… a tribute of respect for our gallant adversary Balabhadra Singh and his brave Goorkhas …’

  Balbhadra and the few survivors left the fort to much opprobrium among their own people as the Gurkhas had always had a tradition to fight to the death, never surrendering. However, they joined up with Gurkha reinforcements under the command of Ranjor Singh Thapa, the Bada Kaji’s son and continued to fight in subsequent battles in the Anglo-Gurkha War.

  The Anglo-Gurkha War ended on March 4, 1816 with the signing of the Treaty of Sagauli between the Gurkha chiefs and the British. As demanded by the treaty, Nepal renounced all claims to the disputed Terai and ceded its conquests west of the Kali River and those extending to the Sutlej River. Nepal remained independent, but it received a British resident with the status of an ambassador to an independent country rather than of the controlling agent of the supreme government as in an Indian state.

  However, Balbhadra Kunwar decided to seek his fortunes elsewhere after the defeat of the Gurkhas by the British.

  According to Norwegian anthropologist Dr Tone Biele, ‘Some dissident Nepali commanders and 200 troops joined the Punjab army, warmly welcomed by the already mentioned King Ranjit Singh. Parts of the Nepali Army which had fought valiantly against Punjab were integrated into the Punjabi armed forces. These Punjabi troops of Nepali origin were stationed in Lahore. Their countrymen back in Nepal started calling them “Lahure”, since they were working in Lahore. This is how the term “Lahure” originated. Later, all British and Indian Gorkhas were called Lahure, which came to mean troops serving for foreign nations.’49

  The timing of when Balbhadra joined the Lahore forces is somewhat unclear. Bandana Rai, in the book Gorkhas: The Warrior Race mentions that Balbhadra Kunwar left Nepal for Lahore after the signing of the Treaty of Sagauli to join the army of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. A.P. Coleman, in A Special Corps: The Beginnings of Gorkha Service with the British, suggests that Balbhadra left for Nepal before the Treaty of Sagauli was signed.

  Regardless, it is an undisputed fact that the Gurkhas were received with open arms in Lahore. Thus was the legend of the Lahure born!

  The next chapter in the saga of the kirpan and the kukhri had begun.

  Maharaja Ranjit Singh was still smarting from his unsuccessful foray into west Kashmir against the Afghans in July 1814. He had lost one of his key his commanders, Mian Ghausa, and the Afghan Army had ejected the Sikhs from the hills. This unsuccessful campaign motivated Ranjit Singh to recruit Gurkhas in the Khalsa Army because he knew the Gurkhas were unparalleled in hill warfare. Besides, he had already seen them in action in Kangra, five years earlier at the Battle of Ganesh Ghati and had been much impressed by their valour and discipline.

  Even though the British and the Sikhs were allies, having signed two treaties of friendship, they eyed one another warily as the most formidable powers now left standing in the Indian subcontinent.

  The British, like Ranjit Singh, had been very impressed by the Gurkhas and their fighting abilities during the Anglo-Gurkha War. The two empires began to compete to attract these doughty warriors to their respective ranks. According to Coleman, Gurkhas were attracted to Lahore by the pay of seven to eight and a half rupees a month, which was higher than the British ra
te of pay and several Gurkhas and their families settled in and around Bilaspur (in modern-day Himachal Pradesh).

  In a letter dated 17 April, 1816, a Lt. Ross wrote to the British Resident in Delhi, Metcalfe, ‘… I have received from Lt. MacHarg, a report of his having apprehended an emissary of Raja Ranjit Singh, who has entered the (British) cantonment of Kotgurh under instructions to make known to the 2nd Nusseeree Batallion that men of all ranks would be readily admitted to Ranjit Singh’s service where the pay for a Subedar (Lieutenant) would be 80 Rupees, of a Jemadar (2nd Lieutenant) 25, Havildar (Sergeant) 16, Naick (Corporal) 13 and Sipahi (Private) 8, per mensem. Such as might embrace the offer were recommended to proceed through Cooloo.’

  The newly-recruited Gurkhas found a place in Ranjit Singh’s infantry, which he started developing around 1811. Sikh warriors had traditionally fought on horseback and disdained fighting on foot. The initial infantry divisions were recruited from ethnic groups such as Dogras, Gurkhas and Punjabi Muslims. The infantry battalions had grown to a dozen, numbering about 8000 men by the time the French Chevaliers Allard and Ventura joined Ranjit Singh’s service in 1822.

  The real reform of the Lahore infantry began after the arrival of Ventura, who created the Fauj-I-Khas (The Royal Army), an independent brigade that became known as the ‘Franceesee Campu’ or the French Legion. His brigade consisted mostly of newly-recruited Sikhs with two batalions, the Paltan Khas and the Paltan Dewa Singh. In June 1823, the Gurkha Paltan (battalion) under Balbhadra Kunwar, which was to grow to a strength of around 700 was also placed under his command.

  The Sikhs of Ventura’s brigade wore red coats and white trousers with black cross-belts instead of the white that British sepoys wore. The Gurkhas wore green jackets faced with red as well as the shakos (a cylindrical military hat with a brim and a plume) that British sepoys wore. The Sikh soldiers disdained the shakos and wore turbans.