This Sceptred Isle

by Christopher Lee

  The Gurkhas, who in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries became the British army’s most loyal forces, had in the early nineteenth century gradually encroached into British interests in the Bengal provinces. It was decided in 1814 that these Gurkha movements threatened British interests. The Gurkhas were not confining themselves to a gradual migration of their peoples. They were sending raiding parties. The problem for the British was that the dividing and sub-dividing of the territory included the provision of certain border rights and extensions for the people of Nepal, the Gurkhas. Moreover, the British began to see the mini-invasions as more than an expected spread of Nepalese interests. They were also a direct challenge to British authority. So in 1814, under General Sir David Ochterlony (1758–1825), the British mounted an expeditionary force into Nepal. It took two years to crush the Gurkha opposition. It was a rugged terrain and far from the set-piece military campaigns on the plains and fields of European conflict. Curiously, it was this confrontation that began a partnership between the British army and what became its brigade of Gurkhas.

  The following year the British were once more beset by raiding parties. This time the invaders were Pindari tribesmen reinforced by disaffected Maratha troops. This combination presented an added problem for the British army, which in that area in central and southern India had effectively about 20,000 troops. Officially the Maratha leaders supported British rule. If the two British armies wanted to beat the Pindaris, then they had to do so without worsening relations with the Maratha. They, if they chose, could put ten times the number of men the British had into battle. However, war with the Maratha was inevitable. On 21 December 1817 in the Battle of Mahidpur, 3,000 Maratha soldiers were killed. The British took nearly 800 casualties, killed or wounded. The senior commander of the British forces was General Lord Francis Rawdon-Hastings (1754–1826). He was an experienced soldier who had fought in the American War of Independence the previous century. In 1813, he was Governor-General of India and had taken part in the confrontation against the Gurkhas two years earlier. He should be remembered as the man who bought Singapore for the British in 1819 and would be, if it were not for the image of Sir Stamford Raffles.

  It was Rawdon-Hastings who overpowered the joint Maratha and Pindari troops and so ended the war on 2 June 1818. This is a man who had been a soldier and administrator all his adult life. Apart from a brief interlude in London, he had, like many of his contemporaries, devoted himself to colonial soldiering and administration. So we get from a few lines, the mix of firm nineteenth-century British authority, as well as the benign reasoning that it is possible to live side by side with former adversaries, even though their instincts and characteristics are obvious enough to keep men like Rawdon-Hastings on their guard. There is one point in his journal when Rawdon-Hastings, negotiating a settlement and therefore working out the price to be paid to defeated princes, heard why the Maratha leaders preferred wider spread than consolidated influence. One of them explained, ‘We Mahrattas have a maxim that it is well to have a finger in every man’s dish.’ Rawdon-Hastings interpreted this that as far as the Indians were concerned there was ‘solid value in pretext for interference which would afford opportunities of pillage or extortion’.

  The princes defeated, they had now to look to the British government for money and position in order to maintain any authority over their own people. It is here that Rawdon-Hastings’ diary produces the perfect description of the British rule in India. It can be likened to the ways of a strict public school housemaster. The recalcitrant boy will be beaten. That same boy will be then encouraged to play games and even be invited to tea parties as long as the games are played by the housemaster’s rules and his social courtesies observed at teatime.

  The dispersed plunderers having now no head under whom they could reunite, will look out for other modes of subsistence; and it is to be hoped that a tranquillity will prevail in central India which we may improve to noble purposes. The introduction of instruction into those countries, where the want of information and of principle is universal, is an object becoming the British Government. It is very practicable. Detachments of youths who have been rendered competent at the Lancasterian schools in Bengal under the missionaries, should be despatched under proper leaders to disseminate that method of teaching. Its progress would soon enable numbers to read and comprehend books of moral inculcation in the Hindostanee language. Lady Hastings caused a compilation of apologues, and of maxims relative to social duties, to be printed for the use of her school at Barrackpore. It was not only studied, to all appearance profitably, by the boys, but many individuals of high caste in the neighbourhood used to apply for the perusal of copies. It has all the attraction of a novelty, while the simplicity of what it recommends is likely to make impression on minds to which any reflection on the topics was ever before suggested.53

  The First Sikh War (1845–6) and the First Afghan War (1839–42) were linked. In the summer of 1838 a treaty was signed over Afghanistan, which the British, in the form of the East India Company, either believed or hoped would stop Persian and Russian incursion in Afghanistan. The British had large interests in the kingdom. They certainly believed that there was a constant threat from the Punjab in the east and/or Persia in the west. There was also constant fear that the Russians would control Afghanistan and therefore threaten India. There were two claimants to the Afghan throne. One, Dost Muhammad, was supported by the Russians. The second, supported by the British, was Shah Shuja. Here was the source for the First Afghan war. The British army of the Indus, under Sir John Keane (1781–1844), took Kandahar. Shah Shuja was crowned. By the end of July 1839 Dost Muhammad had abandoned Kabul and had taken refuge in the north. If these animosities and regions strike a note with modern newspaper readers, this is hardly surprising. The warring of Afghanistan and the tribal defaults have not much changed in 200 years. A garrison of 8,000 East India Company troops remained at Kabul to preserve the authority of Shah Shuja. An uneasy truce lasted until 1841. The son of Dost Muhammad, Akbar Khan, roused sufficient troops and people to mutiny against this all but British rule.

  The British ambassador to the court in Kabul was Sir William Hay Macnaghten (1793–1841). He was effectively the British ruler. He had no regard for the tribesmen and warlords of Dost Muhammad. However, it was his task to make sure that the apparent truce survived. If any proof were needed that Macnaghten was right in mistrusting the Afghan leaders it came two days before Christmas in 1841. He had a meeting arranged with Akbar Khan. It was supposed to be a meeting to discuss differences. Akbar Khan’s senses of diplomacy were limited. The discussion did not continue for long. Akbar Khan murdered Macnaghten. Apart from the outrage, the British position was now precarious. Akbar Khan’s stock was high as he himself had killed the British envoy. Amongst his people, therefore, he had nothing to prove. A couple of weeks later, in early January 1842, the British garrison at Kabul was forced to surrender. Akbar Khan promised the British that they would be able to withdraw from Afghanistan in all safety. Who would have trusted this Afghan murderer? Major General William Elphinstone was the commander who surrendered the garrison. He died almost immediately. Some 16,500 people, made up of Indian troops, British troops, wives and children, filed out of the Kabul garrison, surely with little faith in Akbar Khan’s promise of safe conduct to India. The Afghans massacred most of them on the Khyber Pass road on 13 January 1842. A very few were taken prisoner and thrown into prison at Kabul.

  All that was left of the British presence in Afghanistan was the garrison at Kandahar and that at Jalalabad, both under siege. General Sir George Pollock (1786–1872) was the man designated to rescue the three pockets of British survivors and their followers at Jalalabad, Kandahar and Kabul. Pollock had joined the East India Company’s army at the age of seventeen. He fought at the siege of Bhartpur two years later and in the Gurkha War of 1814–6. Ten years later he was fighting in the first of the Burmese wars. He was a natural choice, perhaps the only one, to lead the rescue attempt
to Jalalabad. Akbar Khan’s tribesmen began the siege of Jalalabad in March 1842. Pollock did not manage to raise the siege until 16 April and then pressed on to Kabul. There were just ninety-five prisoners left. He made them safe and then destroyed the grand citadel. Pollock returned in triumph, but in a sombre mood.

  By December 1842 the British, the East India Company, could no longer justify the cost and the danger of being in Afghanistan. They pulled out just twelve months after the murder of Macnaghten. The successful Akbar Khan brought his father Dost Muhammad to Kabul in triumph. Here was a lasting lesson of the feebleness of any outside force or ideology to rule over the Afghans. It was a lesson, seemingly, unlearned by the British and all who followed, including the Russians and Americans into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The wars of Victoria’s soldiers continued. Peace seemed so far off when the smallest skirmish led to terrible reprisals. The withdrawal from Afghanistan had hardly been completed when the British entered upon the Sikh Wars (1845–9).

  The Sikhs came from the Punjab. Here was a centre of loyalty to the British. Their leader at the beginning of the nineteenth century was Ranjit Singh. Partly with the help of the French, Ranjit Singh had structured the Sikh army along European lines. The competence of the Sikh army was partly responsible for the ridding of Afghans from the province of Punjab. However, Ranjit Singh had not achieved his ambition, the establishment of a Sikh State. He did overpower Kashmir and Teshawar. He really wanted the territory across the Sutlej river, the important waterway which runs, roughly, from the area of Amritsar down to Bahawalpur in what is now Pakistan, where it joins the Chenab River. In 1839 he died and with him went the Sikh support for the British. The British had annexed Sind province and there was much speculation that they would do the same in the Punjab. There was hardly any secret about the Sikh unrest nor their intentions and so when, on 11 December 1845, 20,000 Sikhs crossed the Sutlej, the British army was there. Within a week the two forces engaged at Ferozepore. There was some confusion among the British. Sir Hugh Gough, who commanded the army, had to take orders from the Governor-General, Sir Henry Hardinge. Hardinge wanted reinforcements. What might have been a quick victory for the British turned into a slog, but it was enough to eventually have the Sikhs driven back beyond the River Sutlej. The following year, 1846, the two armies met again. This was the wretched stuff of military legend with the 16th Lancers charging full tilt at the Sikh positions. The Sikhs withdrew. A fortnight later Gough’s army all but slaughtered the Sikhs. The First War was done and a truce of sorts was signed on 11 March 1846 at Lahore.

  The Sikhs, a warrior caste, believed they could still overwhelm the British. The Punjab protectorate under Sir Henry Lawrence had two years’ breathing space to prepare for what seemed an inevitable uprising. There were, in 1848, skirmishes. Gough, had prepared his army, but perhaps not for the casualties he was about to receive at the Battle of Chillianwala on 13 January 1849. Gough, not yet re inforced with troops on their way from Multan, was attacked by the Sikh artillery. He sent in his infantry. Fighting continued on from mid-afternoon to late evening. By then the British had taken the Sikh lines, but at an awful cost. On the British side alone, more than 2,300 soldiers were killed. Gough may have won the battle, but he had lost his command. He was told he was to be replaced by Charles Napier (1782–1853).

  Napier was an experienced officer, having fought in Ireland and conspicuously in the Peninsular Wars under Wellington. It was Napier who defeated the amirs at the Battle of Meeanee in Sind in 1843 and, when in control of the province, is said to have sent this report to London: ‘Peccavi’ (I have sinned). His command in the Sikh Wars was short-lived. He left India in 1851 and died in England two years later. Napier, before he left India, had warned that British tactics, especially in taking over estates and provinces, would lead to revolt. He was never to witness the dark and revolutionary change in British India history.

  When Lord James Dalhousie (1812–60) was appointed Governor-General in 1847, the British developed a new policy which was hardly universally popular among the princes and even some of the British. The solemn custom of the Hindus is that a son has to be present at the funeral of the father. The reason: the successor proves the importance and success of the father who will therefore not burn in hell. But what if there were to be no surviving son? It was common enough practice for a boy or young man to be quickly adopted in order to observe this Hindu rite. This therefore meant that the son, adopted or not, would always inherit possessions, including property. If we expand this hypothesis according to rank, the whole State would be inherited. Dalhousie saw this and disapproved.

  The Governor-General used the death of the Raja of Satara as a test case. The Raja had died and his heir had been adopted. Dalhousie said that if there was no proper heir then the title should lapse. The Raja’s adopted heir was not proper as far as Dalhousie was concerned and the Hindu rite and tradition should be ignored. If the male line had lapsed, so had the inheritance and therefore Dalhousie would claim Satara for the Company, that is, the British. This very imperial idea of sequestration was known as the Doctrine of Lapse. The more territory Britain gained, by whatever means, produced a side effect. It is difficult to understand why Dalhousie and others did not accept that one of the costs of gaining territory is that it has to be protected: the more territory, the more protection. Britain could not provide British troops to guard its Empire. In India the solution was to enlarge the army of sepoys. So, in a short period, Britain was in danger of transforming its India interests from a commercial operation that used dubious but local practice to grease the machinery of commerce, to something more vulnerable: Acts such as the Doctrine of Lapse would so easily cause agitation, disrespect and downright resentment. An imperial army, spread across the country and made up largely of local soldiers had to be enormously disciplined and motivated, otherwise that resentment could spread to military ranks. Here, then, was one of the elements in what became the greatest test of British rule in India during the mid-nineteenth century – the Sepoy Rebellion.

  The modern parallel is obvious. The idea of replacing one system of rule with another one which seems better, even fairer, does not always soothe the senses of injustice within the indigenous population. The state of Satara Nagpur in 1848, then Sambhalpur in 1849 and five years later, Jhansi and Nagpur ‘lapsed’ and were thus taken over. After Nagpur, the British decided that the corruption among the rulers of Oudh was intolerable. It has to be said that some of Dalhousie’s own officials expressed their doubts about the policy. Two colonels, John Low and William Sleeman, the latter the Resident in Oudh, made their opposition clear. They were overruled along with anyone else who disapproved not so much in principle of annexation, but the detail. The counter-argument to Dalhousie’s policy was that it was perfectly reasonable for the British Company to assume the running of Nagpur or Oudh as long as this was not seen as robbery. Correcting maladministration was one thing; the British helping themselves to the revenues was quite another. It was the same argument that in the post-colonial twentieth and twenty-first centuries Western states and international organizations could run developing countries, but their banks and corporations should not cream off the desperately needed profits. So the argument against a complete takeover of Oudh was not against the principle of annexation, even Sleeman suggested that. He and others, however, were opposed to what would become one of the scars on imperialism, the lifting of the revenues.

  The politics and accountancy came together without any fuss. Simple annexation meant taking over the whole State and virtually declaring it British. That was a difficult decision. Confining the action to Company administration only, would improve the lot of the people and, most importantly, the Company. It would of course be an expensive operation and the Company would not be expected to bear the cost. So it was up to the accountants to show that the revenues, or part of them, could be used to offset the expense of putting the house in order. But what of the surplus revenues? Who owned those? Dalhousie cou
ld well be accused of short-sightedness, but not of ambition for the wealth of Oudh. On 18 June 1855, Dalhousie declared that the Company would not annex Oudh, but it would administer it and, of course, it would take for itself any revenues it thought reasonable. In other words, the King of Oudh was simply a puppet. In reality Oudh would, or so Dalhousie and the Company thought, become their own metaphorical goldmine from January 1856. It appears that they had not imagined many difficulties with this concept although there were hints that the puppet might not necessarily dance. This proved to be true. The King refused to sign over his State. The administrator, and one of the most distinguished figures in Indian colonial history, was Major-General Sir James Outram. He received instructions to issue a proclamation that Oudh was now part of British India.

  The colonels and Outram understood the connection between colonial arrogance and the overwhelming numbers of sepoys in the British army. For example, the most important army was in Bengal. Perhaps as many as seven out of every ten sepoys came from Oudh. In 1857, and the beginning of the Indian Mutiny, there were 277,000 soldiers in the armies of the three presidencies of Bombay, Madras and Bengal. In some cases, depending on regiments, 80 per cent of the force would be Indian. By itself this preponderance of sepoys was not a threat to British rule. There had been little to suggest that the vast majority were anything but totally obedient and loyal. The policies, however, excited by people like Dalhousie, added an element of uncertainty into the minds of those like Sleeman and Low who were perhaps closer to the moods of those they ruled. Dalhousie thought the imbalance between British troops and sepoys unwise. In London this was understood, but in 1857 Britain had only the year before concluded a peace to the two-year long Crimean War. Between 1854 and 1856 there had been no flexibility in the British order of battle to allow Dalhousie extra troops, or even replace those taken from India to fight in the Crimea. Certainly the imbalance of sepoy to British soldier was marked in the mutiny which began in May 1857, but it is unlikely that if it had been restored earlier the presence of larger numbers of British soldiers would have made much difference.