by Anita Anand
The Sikhs, the group that had once united and ruled the province he himself now governed, were ‘Virile and enterprising but often of overweening conceit, and unless firmly and tactfully handled obstinate to the point of fanaticism.’11
Sir Michael simply could not understand why his masters in London failed to see the deficits in the natives that he did. It maddened him that greater autonomy was being given to inferior races. Step by step Britain would lose the entire Raj unless men like him stopped it from happening.
On Sunday 28 June 1914, at 1.45 p.m. Lahore time, a shot rang out in the far-off Austro-Hungarian city of Sarajevo. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian with ties to the secretive military group known as the Black Hand, propelled all major European military powers into war. Just over a year into Sir Michael’s term in office, one man, with one bullet, changed the course of human history.
When Britain formally entered the war in August, the repercussions were felt as keenly in India as they were in the Home Counties of England. From Sir Michael’s province, the 47th Sikhs, a regiment comprising an initial 10,000 men, became one of the first infantry divisions to be sent into the French trenches. Most of the men had never left their home villages and had no idea of the icy conditions they would face in France’s harsh, long winter. Such was the rush to move them to the front line that many men did not have boots or uniforms to suit the climate. In consequence, they found themselves battling both the Germans and the elements. Both exacted a heavy body count.
One million Indians would be sent to Europe to fight between 1914 and 1918. Some of the letters they sent home painted a grim picture: ‘Do not think that this is war. This is not war. It is the ending of the world,’12 wrote one who found himself wounded in the filthy and freezing trenches.
Sir Michael made it his private crusade to send more men to war than any of the provincial lieutenant governors of India. He toured Punjab, insisting the young had a moral duty to fight in ‘defence of their hearths and homes’.13 He took great pride in his efforts and successes.
At the outbreak of war, half of the Indian army was drawn from Punjab, and as these early deployments suffered the heaviest casualties, the need for replacement troops grew urgent. Sir Michael described his Punjab as ‘the Shield . . . the Spearhead . . . and the Sword-hand of India’14 and made it his mission to replace the dead as fast as they fell. Indians were supposedly a willing force, yet the experience of some Punjabi villagers suggested that not all were as inclined to fight in the foreign war as Sir Michael would have the generals believe. Officials in the Punjab were told to produce a given number of men from each particular district. In response, they used a mixture of bribery and threat to get what they needed.
At first there were promises of land and financial reward for those who enlisted, but as the war dragged on and the trenches grew hungrier, inducement gave way to coercion. Stories of press-ganging began to stir in the local population. In Gujranwala, the city of Maharajah Ranjit Singh’s birth, young men fled their homes one night after hearing that twenty blacksmiths and carpenters would be rounded up and deported to the front line in the morning.15
Despite such stories, the vast majority of troops from Punjab signed up of their own volition. Some joined up because they came from families where their fathers had served; others because they wanted to make a better life for their own kin. No matter what their motivation, all who fought believed Britain would be grateful for their sacrifice. Their gratitude might even force them to allow Indians to govern their own country.
CHAPTER 5
NAME, RANK AND SERIAL FAILURE
While the world was tearing itself apart, Udham Singh found his own small corner of it in tatters. His brother, Sadhu Singh, the only person who truly knew him, was taken from him in 1917. The exact cause of death was not recorded, or perhaps even known, but according to orphanage records, Udham’s brother contracted an illness and died quickly.
Such was the closeness of the two boys, it is almost certain that Udham, barely sixteen at the time, watched his brother die. Being so young when his mother and father were swept away, their loss would have been an abstract horror. The death of his brother, however, must have been viscerally real and unbearably painful. It explains perhaps why, later in life, one of his favourite aliases would be ‘Sadh’, a diminutive of the word ‘Sadhu’, his brother’s birth name. Only those who were fondest of him would know and use that name. Perhaps when he heard them say it, he felt his brother was still close.
While Udham Singh grieved, most of his orphanage family were leaving. They were old enough to find apprenticeships or places in the army. The orphanage’s credo was and remains to this day: ‘Be a man. Make your way. Make us proud.’1 In 1917, Udham was in no fit state to do any of those things.
The orphanage was compassionate enough to let him stay. While he struggled to find his feet, Sir Michael tirelessly toured his province driving young men just like Udham into the arms of the recruiters. With the government promising to set aside 178,000 acres for those who served with greatest valour, it was hard for the poor to resist.2
If the carrot failed to work, Sir Michael had a number of different sticks, including pitting Punjabis against each other. In the Montgomery district, not far from Amritsar, Sir Michael turned signing up into a matter of tribal honour. Could the Muslims of the area stand to be humbled by the Muslims in the mountains? Failure to sign up would be tantamount to cowardice and an insult to their faith.3
In Karnal, where scripture said an Iron Age Hindu king once shredded his own flesh to please his gods, O’Dwyer told men they were unworthy of their lineage, outdone by others in neighbouring areas.4
His message did not need to be consistent. It just needed to be convincing. In Ludhiana, he talked of ‘Sikh tenacity and heroism’.5 In Ferozepur, he called Sikhs cowards: ‘You have seen how races hitherto unaccustomed to arms have responded to the call.’6
Sir Michael weaponised friendly rivalries, particularly those that had always existed between Lahore and Amritsar. He taunted the young men of the capital for being outshone by their neighbours in Punjab’s ‘second city’: ‘On the 1st January, if Lahore had done its duty in the way Amritsar has, it should have had 10,000 fighting men in the army; actually, it had less than 3,000.’7
He threatened Lahore’s status as provincial capital: ‘Perhaps some future Lieutenant-Governor will revive the scheme of Maharajah Ranjit Singh to remove the capital of the Punjab from Lahore to Amritsar because the people of Amritsar have shown such splendid loyalty and sprit of service for their King and country.’8
It was not an empty threat. The British had moved capitals before.
The busiest recruitment kiosk in Amritsar lay just outside Hall Gate, one of the twelve fortified entrances into the old city. Its distinctive clock face and crenelated red-brick turrets towered over, but was largely ignored by, Punjabis as they bustled in and out of the narrow gullies of Hall Bazaar. Amritsar was a city of the senses, of noisy commerce, garish colours and delicious food. Its inhabitants prided themselves on their lust for life.
The main army recruitment kiosk was manned by a man named Mela Singh, a civilian whose job it was to out-shout the hawkers around him and sell the war. Some eight months after his brother’s death, Udham heard Mela’s promises of honour and riches to the brave. Sometime late in 1917 he approached Mela Singh and asked to enlist.9
During the First World War, the official minimum age for recruits was nineteen; however, demand at the fronts in both western Europe and the Middle East had become so overwhelming that younger boys often slipped through the net. Mela Singh ignored the fact that Udham was a few months under age and told the eighteen-year-old to go home, pack his bags and come back in a few days, when a rail ticket would be waiting for him. Udham was to travel to the capital, where he would be officially processed.10
In Lahore, the enlistment officer, a man named Rai Sahib,11 apparently had more scruples than Mela S
ingh. He took one look at Udham and told him to go away and come back in a year when he was old enough.12 Udham begged him to change his mind,13 arguing that, as a member of India’s low-caste poor, the army was his best chance to change his life. Terrifying as the fighting might be, the army guaranteed food on his plate, clothes on his back and, for the most part, a roof over his head.
Udham, even then, had a gift for persuading people to do things against their better judgement. Reluctantly, Rai filled and stamped forms, committing the boy to a war from which he knew many did not return. Handing over the documents, he instructed Udham to make his way to the Mian Mir cantonment, where he would be required to present himself to undergo a medical examination.14
Two miles from the lieutenant governor’s residence, Mian Mir was the historic home of the 32nd Sikh Pioneers. The regiment had been raised after the mutiny/rebellion of 1857 and was made up largely of Mazbhi and Ramdasia15 Sikhs, low-caste Hindus who had converted to the newer religion. Though Sikhism supposedly abjured the caste system, old hierarchy still made itself felt, often in nuanced ways. Marriages rarely crossed the old caste divides, and Mazbhis and Ramdasias worshipped in their own gurdwaras. The British followed these dotted fault lines in the faith and reinforced them, composing regiments along caste lines.
The regimental motto of the 32nd Pioneers, ‘Aut inveniam viam aut faciam’ – ‘Find a way or make a way’, suited their fiercely dogged reputation. At the time Udham was signing up, Indians were desperately needed to shore up British forces in the Middle East, where losses had been catastrophic.
Young Udham, still with the long, uncut hair of his Sikh faith, waited in line to be weighed, measured and prodded by a doctor. Only then was he issued with a regimental badge: a metal circle capped with two ominously crossed axes, capped by a crown. New identity pinned to the front of his turban, uniform hanging off his tall, rather gangly frame, the teenager waited for mobilisation.
Mesopotamia lay at the heart of the old Ottoman Empire, nestled between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Thanks to an eastern border with Persia, it had immense strategic significance. In 1908, a large oil field was discovered in the fields of Masjed Soleiman in the south-west of what is now Iran.
Within a few years, that same oil was fuelling the British Empire. The British knew that if the enemy were to cut them off from these reserves, its navy would be left dead in the water. Now Germany was threatening to do just that.
Even before the declaration of war, while accelerating its own ship-building programme, Germany had been busy establishing close relations with the Ottomans. At first, ties were defined by trade, designed to further their ‘Drang nach Osten’ – ‘Thrust towards the East’. Before long, bilateral agreements morphed into acts of blatant infiltration. By the time Udham found himself on a ship headed towards the region, the Ottoman army was already firmly under the influence of German ‘advisors’. Encouraged to think of the British as their enemy, and the war against them as a jihad,16 the Ottoman army was fully committed to the British Empire’s destruction.
Britain needed men from India to keep the oil flowing. At the start of the war, in November 1914, the 104th Wellesley’s Rifles and the 117th Mahrattas of 16th Brigade of the Indian army’s 6th Division were among the first to arrive in Mesopotamia. Their successful capture of Basra provided one of the only glimmers of light in an otherwise desperate time, nonetheless it was only the beginning of a protracted and bloody campaign that would claim the lives of more than 40,000 British and Indian soldiers.
The commander-in-chief of the Mesopotamian expeditionary force, Lieutenant General Sir Stanley Maude, outlined the situation he was facing. In Baghdad and Basra, his men had been under relentless assault and were exhausted.17 Maude reserved particular praise for the camaraderie between his British and Indian soldiers: ‘British and Indian troops working side-by-side have vied with each other in their efforts to close with the enemy, and all ranks have been imbued throughout with that offensive spirit which is the soldier’s finest jewel.’18
To maintain communication and supply lines in his hard-won territory, Maude ordered the construction of a field railway, running up from the coast all the way to Basra. The lieutenant general also had a small flotilla of armoured boats at his command, ensuring supplies and communication got through in the event that on-land logistics were cut.
It was to Basra that Udham Singh was sent and ordered to keep Maude’s railway running and his boats afloat.19 The carpentry skills he had learned at the orphanage should have made Udham useful, but youth, lack of experience and temperament made army life very difficult for him. He exhibited insolence and an inability to deal with authority, which his commanding officers found intolerable. Deemed immature and unreliable, after less than six months of what should have been a year-long tour, Udham was declared unfit for service and sent back to India.20 In a place where his fellow countrymen were hailed as heroes, not only had Udham Singh failed to make his mark, he had managed to disgrace himself.
On his return to Punjab, and at a loss as to what to do next, Udham Singh returned to his birthplace of Sunam and stayed with a maternal uncle, Jiwa Singh. The older man was fond of his hot-headed relative,21 and only too aware of the tragedy of his youth. He also perhaps understood his recent experiences better than most. Jiwa had served in the army as a subedar, the second-highest rank an enlisted Indian could attain.
Despite Jiwa’s reservoir of sympathy, for some unknown reason Udham left the subedar’s home as suddenly as he had arrived, after only a short stay. He returned to Amritsar and his old orphanage. There he was granted temporary residence, further testament to his charm and powers of persuasion.22 The war had created many fatherless children and the orphanage would undoubtedly have been facing more need than it could accommodate. Nonetheless, it would always find space for Udham.
Though Khalsa orphanage had been the only real home he had known in his life, Udham appears to have found it impossible to settle down here either. Perhaps the absence of his brother was too hard, but after less than a month he decided to re-enlist and try the army once again. Udham sought out Mela Singh, the rule-bending Hall Gate recruiter, once more.23 The Great War was in its final throes and haemorrhaging men. Mela did not turn him away.
So many of the records pertaining to Indian servicemen at this time have been lost or destroyed, so one cannot be certain how Mela Singh managed it, but somehow, and despite Udham’s ignominious and curtailed first tour, Mela got him out to Mesopotamia once again.24
Udham was sent to Basra and then later to Baghdad, where he appeared to have kept his head down and his hands busy, working as a carpenter for Three Works Company.25 His labour unit, among the lowest ranking in the Pioneers, was tasked with general maintenance of vehicles and machinery. A lowly, motor oil-covered grunt, far away from the fighting, Udham may not have appreciated that he had a ringside view on history.
Events unfolding around him were changing the face of the world map for ever, and while he hammered nails and planed down planks, the Ottoman Empire came crashing down around him. The Allies carved up what was left.
Having served a full year this time, Udham Singh returned to India in early 1919. He barely had 200 rupees to his name and, despite the promises of the British, not one square inch of land to call his own.26
CHAPTER 6
BLACK ACTS, RED LINES
Disillusioned but alive, Udham Singh was home. Thousands of his countrymen would not be so lucky. Left to rot in mass graves in foreign lands,* their distraught families would never be able to pray over their pyres, or stand by freshly draped burial plots, palms face up to the sky. Punjab had sent its boys across an ocean. Waves of grief rolled back.
As Udham unpacked his dirty kit bag wondering what to do next, Gandhi, the mahatma or ‘Great Soul’ as he was now known, was sick. So sick that many believed he might die. It was as if the war had broken the very spirit of the man.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the same South African lawyer w
ho had visited London’s India House years before, had returned to his native India four years earlier in 1915. In that time he had turned the political situation in India upside down, becoming both the greatest hope and greatest disappointment to the nationalist movement.
Gandhi had travelled to India in 1915 on the insistence of one particular man: a soft-bodied, bespectacled former clerk named Gopal Krishna Gokhale. A prominent member of the infant Congress movement, Gokhale knew great tracts of Thomas Paine and John Stuart Mill off by heart and would quote them to any who would listen. The problem was that, after the hurt of the war, people did not want to listen to him anymore. The gratitude that so many had expected from the British was not forthcoming. Wartime emergency powers, in the form of the Defence of India Act, had granted men like Sir Michael unprecedented powers, which he seemed to be using too enthusiastically for the Indians’ liking. The laws allowed preventive detention and internment without trial; people could be lifted from their homes and jailed without even knowing what their offence had been. It also restricted freedoms of speech and movement.
Moderates and radicals within Congress were tearing each other apart around Gokhale, fighting over the best way to fight the Raj. Struck by the non-violent way in which Gandhi had defeated the pass laws of the Transvaal, he begged him to come home and help. Gandhi was his last and best hope to win concessions for his fellow Indians without losing lives in the process. Gokhale hoped he might at least teach them how to use passive resistance in the wake of the new oppression.
